Alice’s Restaurant (“The Back Room”) isn’t around anymore, now it’s Theresa’s Stockbridge Cafe.

Alice didn’t live in a restaurant. She lived in the old Trinity church nearby the restaurant. Built as St James Chapel in 1829, enlarged and renamed Trinity church in 1866. Purchased by Ray & Alice Brock in 1964.

A Thanksgiving dinner clean-up in 1965 launched Arlo Guthrie on a folk singing career, created an anti-war anthem and transformed an old church into a home for a local charity called the Guthrie Center.

Back in 1965, the young hippie, Arlo Guthrie

and a friend tossed a VW vanload of trash off a cliff in the western Massachusetts town, creating a stir – and a song.

“Garbage has been very good to me,” said Guthrie, now a father of four whose hair has grayed, and waist size has doubled since his youth, but whose vigor has hardly waned.

“The great thing was, when the record came out, most people thought it was a nice piece of fiction.”

Those who live around the Berkshires town, or were raised on 1960s antiwar music, know the truth behind the lyrics. Yes, Guthrie’s friends Alice and Ray Brock are real, and in 1965 they did host Thanksgiving dinner for a motley group of pals in their home, a converted church that is, yes, just half a mile from the railroad tracks in Housatonic, a hamlet bordering Stockbridge.

The illegal garbage run truly happened, as did the subsequent arrest, jailing and fining of Guthrie.

External link to Arlo’s accounting of the garbage dumping event (use browser BACK to return)

Arlo Guthrie sought to provide a place to bring together individuals for spiritual service, and founded the Guthrie Center, an Interfaith Church, in 1991.

It fulfills Arlo’s aim to meet the ongoing needs of the community, and support cultural preservation and educational achievement. The Trinity Church where the song “The Alice’s Restaurant Massacre” began and where the movie “Alice’s Restaurant” was filmed, continues to service the local and international community.

The police station and the town hall are housed in the same stately white building, so locals can do all their legal errands at one time. To see Guthrie’s cell, you don’t have to get yourself arrested: His blue cell door sits outside at the bottom of the stairs of the police station. Guthrie’s jail sentence has become a tourist attraction.

Every May the Guthrie Center holds its annual Garbage Trail Walk. The 6.3-mile tour, which raises money for Huntington’s disease (Guthrie’s father died of the degenerative neurological illness), follows the route spelled out in “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” 

Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that's just the name of the song.

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track
An' you can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

The restaurant was at the rear of the building called “The Back Room”, and a general store was at the front. Rockwell’s studio was on second floor above them both.

Chief of Police William “Obie” Obanhein, was Guthrie’s arresting officer.

Obanhein posed for Norman Rockwell for a handful of sketches, including the 1959 black-and-white sketch Policeman With Boys,

which was used in nationwide advertisements for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Arlo wrote a song about Norman Rockwell:

"Norman Always Knew"

I've been from Maine to Texas
I've searched from coast to coast
For the country on the cover
Of the Saturday Evening Post
On every road I traveled
In all the places I passed through
I saw the faces of America
That Norman always knew

There's so much that we owe this man
With a pipe in his mouth and a brush in his hand
His pictures made us understand
What Norman always knew
No matter how the world may change
These words sing out like an old refrain
"Deep inside we're all the same"
Norman always knew

The young girl at the mirror
The boy with the fishing pole
The family all together
The young man leaving home
The wonder of young lovers
The old folks love still true
The special feelings that we share
Norman always knew

There's so much that we owe this man
With a pipe in his mouth and a brush in his hand
His pictures made us understand
What Norman always knew
No matter how the world may change
These words sing out like an old refrain
"Deep inside we're all the same"
Norman always knew

"Deep inside we're all the same"
Norman Rockwell knew