"You can get anything you want...

at Alice's Restaurant."

I was born in 1966.  I grew up hearing this on the radio every Thanksgiving.  My mom and dad didn't play it in my house, but all the "cool" radio stations, (WPLJ, WAPP in New York) played it and I listened on my transistor.  When I got older we played it when we were out partying on the eve of Thanksgiving.  It was always a quirky folk song that really didn't fit in with our rock and roll playlist.  But we played it every Thanksgiving because it was part of the rock tradition, it made us think about things we weren't quite old enough to remember with clarity, about a generation that we were attracted to but not part of.  

Well, on this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for Arlo's "Alice's Restaurant."  Although I didn't know it at the time, in retrospect, it was a little bit of the anti-war movement that made its way right into my Thanksgiving tradition and my heart.  It made me think about and be grateful for peace after the Vietnam war, it made me think as a child that maybe somewhere out there there were people that wouldn't let the world get blown up by Russia or the U.S.A. or both.  It made me love Arlo's generation and idealize it.  Later I'd have a 7th grade teacher write on the bottom of my paper about the Woodstock generation.  She said "I was there, it wasn't all that you think it was."  Well, that made me doubt my own perception and feel like a dumb kid for about a day.  And then her comment didn't really matter to me.  

Because what was left behind was the creative spirit of peace from that generation, and that could never be diminished.  It permeated the music of that era, a new vision was put forth by the people, and it didn't matter that there were imperfections, because it was the vision that mattered.  I knew what I felt was pure.    

I've played this every Thanksgiving and raised two teenagers who've heard it.  As children they really didn't get the connection between turkey, pilgrims, and this song.  But beginning in 2003 we went to antiwar protests, and Alice's Restaurant took on a real meaning for them on Thanksgiving 2003.  I was glad to have it to comfort them with, to ease their insecurity about the confusing message all of our children are receiving right now.  It was good for them to hear that it was OK to think that war was indeed a crying shame.  It was good for them to hear   that there were people in the past that believed just as we believe today, to hear this simple story and voice from the past that also questioned leaders that made no sense, authority that tried to hand down that the way to spread peace was to kill people.    

So this Thanksgiving, play this for your kids.  Clearchannel doesn't play it anymore, so it's up to us to pass this on to the next generation.  If any of you have stories about "Alice's Restaurant" post them below.  I visited the church last summer, it's in the Berkshires.  When I walked in I entered through the back door by mistake,  there was an older lady taking a nap on a couch and an older man there who took me on a "tour" of the church which is now used as a community center that Arlo's foundation sponsors.  It wasn't like walking through an unfamiliar iconic place for me, it was like stepping into a friend's kitchen.  The feeling of immediate acceptance and even pleasure at my intrusion validated the fact that I'd planned my summer vacation just to get there.  In a time when war is upon us, I needed to know "those" people were still there, and officially become "one of them." Go have a visit yourselves...
http://www.guthriecenter.org/...

So I invite you all to "walk right in it's around the back" and play this today and every Thanksgiving, and maybe they'll remember it's a movement.  How about singing a few bars with me right now, here we go...it's comin' around..."You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant!"  (That was terrible.)
    http://www.mp3.com/...
A Happy Thanksgiving to you all and know our thoughts, prayers and intentions for peace join yours, today.