It’s a song about Alice — you remember Alice…

This is a follow-up post.

First — Ed, take it easy. I was trying to be considerate of you in not naming you. It’s been pointed out that it can seem unfair for me to take a comment and answer it in a post — some say I’m using my position to tear down another person — so I didn’t name you. Of course, what would "Ed" have told anybody? Not much. So no harm either way, I guess.

Secondly, as Bill said (trust our Bill to recognize a song allusion), that’s from "Alice’s Restaurant." I try not to be too mysterious, which is why, if you click on the link in the first place where I refer to the song, you get the full lyrics.

The song was actually the inspiration for the post. In the song — supposedly inspired by real-life events — Arlo Guthrie gets rejected from the draft because of his criminal record. His crime? Littering. There’s a very funny passage (the "song" is mostly spoken, and it’s about 20 minutes or more long) in which, after acknowledging he has a record, he is sent to the Group W bench, where he sits with real criminals, who at first turn their backs on him when they learn he’s just a litterbug, but come back when he adds, "and creatin’ a nuisance."

Anyway, so you don’t have to scroll or search through all that, here’s the relevant passage:

… and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W …. NOW kid!!"

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W’s where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean ‘n’ ugly
‘n’ nasty ‘n’ horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad’ya get?" I said, "I didn’t get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Sergeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said…

Of course, it’s much better when you hear Arlo telling it.

Speaking of Arlo — did anybody notice that his daughter, who’s been living right here amongst us for years, had her last performance in Columbia a couple of weekends ago? She and her husband and kids are going to move up to the country somewhere near her Dad (which, as it happens, is not all that far from Stockbridge, Mass., where the littering crime occurred). They have plans to grow blueberries, and she wants to learn to make a pie with them. They plan to do other stuff, too — touring and such — but I really liked the part about the blueberries.

I never saw her all the time she lived here. I did see her once, though, on stage with her Dad. You’ll never guess where, so I won’t ask you to. They were performing at Disney World — Epcot, in fact. They were in this amphitheater on the lake or lagoon or whatever, and they were part of a "flower power" series.

We just sort of happened upon it, on a warm late spring or early summer afternoon. It was quite odd. Arlo knew that, and one of the first things he said to the audience was, "Yeah, I think it’s kinda weird, too."

It was a fairly intimate setting, and folks called out songs they wanted to hear. At one point, I couldn’t hear the request, but he replied, "Now you know I can’t do that here." I suppose he was referring to "Alice’s Restaurant," although it could have been "Mr. Customs Man." Anyway, he didn’t do either.

I apologize for doing another whole post on this. It started as just an answer to Ed among the comments, but then it stretched out, and I kept on adding "circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was" (that’s another song allusion), and figured I wouldn’t waste all that effort on something nobody saw, so here it is.