LYNNFIELD– According to Lynnfield Historical Society’s Communications Coordinator, Linda Gillon, the Society had quite a “large and enthusiastic” crowd at its last meeting, where Alan Foulds gave a lecture inspired by a classic Thanksgiving subject: Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 hit song “Alice’s Restaurant.”
Foulds’ lecture was accompanied by musical performances by Society President Ron Sarro and his son-in-law, Matt Lassitter, concluding with a video put together by Alan’s wife, Anna Carol Foulds.
Sarro opened up the night cautiously, claiming “This could be a total disaster tonight,” but as people piled into the Centre Congregational Church, the Society quickly realized that this meeting was a hit.
The topic of their program may have been a key component. Foulds said, “I don’t know if maybe the people who came just remembered this song so fondly, or maybe it was the timing, just a few days before Thanksgiving.”
Sarro thought the timing had a lot to do with it, saying, “It wasn’t the day before, when people are preparing, but the (college) kids are home” before going on to describe how it’s a more laid-back week. “It just went incredibly well.”
Foulds’ lecture started off discussing an older historical ditty, “Over the River and Through the Woods” by Lydia Marie Child, written in 1844. The poem is well known, but according to his talk its less well known that there really were a specific river and woods she was writing about as she remembered her childhood visits to her Grandfather’s home – not her grandmother’s, as many people sing it today.
The main thrust of his talk though, was about Guthrie’s “probably mostly apocryphal” hit song, about how his arrest for littering one Thanksgiving disqualified him for the Vietnam draft.
The song, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” – told in a tongue in cheek style – was a hit when it was released, despite being over 18 and a half minutes long. It was turned into a movie two years after its release, starring Guthrie himself, and “many of the participants in the actual events.”
The officer who arrested Guthrie in 1965, William “Obie” Obanhein, chose to play himself, even saying “making himself look like a fool was preferable to letting someone else do it for him” according to Foulds. The judge who sentenced Guthrie also chose to play himself he said, and both figures gained some notoriety from their appearance, though both were already known in their own right.
Sarro hopes to do more events like this, scheduled so that they are not too close to a holiday but not shying quite so far away either. “That could be one of the factors” that brought such a large crowd.
“It was the biggest ever” said Sarro, who has been involved with the Society since 2006. Foulds said “There were 90 to 100 people, at least. I cannot remember a larger showing.”
