Stockbridge Police Station — Alice's Restaurant

The Stockbridge Police Station at 2 Main Street in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, is the specific building where Arlo Guthrie was arrested on Thanksgiving Day 1965 for littering — the incident that became the centrepiece of his 18-minute talking blues epic 'Alice's Restaurant Massacree' (1967). Guthrie and a friend had attempted to dispose of a bag of garbage at the town dump, found it closed for the holiday, and left the bag by the side of a road. Officer Obie of the Stockbridge Police Department investigated the litter, found Guthrie's name in it, and arrested him. He was convicted, fined fifty dollars, and required to pick up the garbage. The song Guthrie wrote about the incident ran for the full side of an LP and became one of the most beloved comedy performances in American folk music.

The genius of 'Alice's Restaurant Massacree' lies in what the littering arrest enables: Guthrie's mock-serious account of the crime leads eventually to his appearance before a draft board, where he is deemed unfit for service in Vietnam — not because of any pacifist objection, but because the Army concludes that anyone capable of committing 'the horrible, disgusting, mother-stabbing, father-raping' crime of littering is sufficiently morally compromised to be unsuitable for military service. The absurdist logic is perfect, and the song became an anti-Vietnam War anthem precisely because it made its point through laughter rather than outrage.

The Stockbridge Police Station is in the centre of the small, picturesque Berkshires town that Norman Rockwell made famous through his illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post — Rockwell lived in Stockbridge and painted its Main Street. The station is used by pilgrims who come to see the location of the arrest alongside visits to the Guthrie Center (the old Trinity Church in nearby Great Barrington where Alice and Ray Brock lived). The 'Alice's Restaurant' song continues to be played on Thanksgiving Day on hundreds of American radio stations, a tradition that has continued for over fifty years.