Inspiration for ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ dies

Heather McCarron

Cape Cod Times

USA TODAY NETWORK

For much of the world, she was the Alice at the heart of folk singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie’s hit song 'Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,' but on the tip of Cape Cod, she was also the restaurateur-turned-artist who painted beach stones and randomly left them scattered around for 'daydreamers' to find.

Alice Brock, a resident of Provincetown, Massachusetts, for the past 40 years, died on Nov. 21.

Her death was a week shy of the 59th anniversary of the 'Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat' that she prepared for 18-year-old Guthrie, his friend Rick Robbins and others in 1965. The dinner is mentioned in the nearly 20-minute long, anti-Vietnam song that’s featured in Guthrie’s 1967 debut album of the same name.

'Alice Brock (THE Alice) has passed away at 83,' Guthrie wrote in a Nov. 23 post on his Facebook page, noting that while the death of his lifelong friend wasn’t unexpected, 'it’s still pretty challenging.'

Brock died at a hospice in Wellfleet, about 15 miles southeast of her hometown, according to her obituary.

Provincetown Art Association and Museum Archivist James Zimmerman remembered that Brock made sure Guthrie included a stop at Provincetown’s town hall during his tours.

'Her presence will be missed, but her legacy as a Provincetown artist is strong,' the museum community shared in an email.

Brock’s quirky personality is written large on her own website, alicebrockstudio.com, where she wrote, 'in my mind, objects have personalities, shapes and colors can convey emotion and every carrot has a story.'

After many years in the restaurant business, including running the Back Room in the western Massachusetts town of Stockbridge from 1965 to 1966 that’s referred to in Guthrie’s song, Brock left behind a broken marriage, loaded her Cadillac convertible and came to Provincetown, which she called her 'heart’s home.'

'I used to say, ‘When I grow up I want to live in Provincetown and paint pictures,’' she wrote on her website, reflecting, 'I guess my dreams have come true.'

When she came to the town, she rented 'a small apartment on the water with a shoe box of quarters' and started to draw and paint, a much different place from the former Great Barrington church gifted to her as a newlywed and converted into a home – now the home of the interfaith Guthrie Center at the Old Trinity Church that’s also mentioned in Guthrie’s song as 'the church nearby the restaurant' where Brock lived.

In Provincetown, Brock wrote that she was 'in Heaven' as she 'worked in some Provincetown restaurants' and 'did some catering' but mostly 'walked the beaches picking up stones and daydreaming, drawing and painting.'

Described as a whimsical spirit, she loved painting the beach stones and returning some to the beach, imagining 'somebody walking along the seashore just daydreaming and looking at stones ... and there! A stone is looking back.' In Provincetown, she found 'so many stones ... and so much time' that pretty soon she was putting her stones 'all over the place.'

'I put them on the shelves in supermarkets and in sugar bowls. I’d leave them along the bike trails, drop them into coat pockets and put them on fence posts,' she wrote.

Brock’s palm-sized works of art, through the efforts of friends, have been deposited in many places around the world, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City to the Louvre in Paris, to nearly the top of Mount Everest, the peak of Mount McKinley, the floor of the Grand Canyon and beaches from Cape Cod to Alaska, New Zealand to Venezuela.

In Guthrie’s song, it’s Brock who went to the jailhouse in Stockbridge and 'with a few nasty words to Obie (Police Chief William Obanhein)' bailed Guthrie and his friend Robbins out of jail after they were arrested for dumping litter over a steep local hillside on Thanksgiving Day 1965. The song relates the whole tale, which began when the teens decided to do Brock a favor by hauling away garbage – including a divan, or backless couch – that had accumulated at their church-home and found the town dump closed for the holiday.

The song goes on to reveal how the arrest later got Guthrie out of being sent to fight in the Vietnam War because he 'may not be moral enough to join the army.'

The latter word of the song’s title, 'massacree,' is a colloquialism originating from the Ozarks that means 'a sequence of events so absurd, complicated and uncommon as to be unbelievable' – in other words, a fiasco – according to the WordSense Dictionary.

Guthrie’s song was adapted into a comedy movie, 'Alice’s Restaurant,' directed by Arthur Penn and released in 1969.

In Provincetown, Brock captured the hearts of the community. In 2020, when Brock was struggling to cover the cost of her rent, utilities, medical and other bills because of failing health, a GoFundMe fundraiser was created to help her.

It ended up bringing in nearly $180,000 from more than 4,500 donors. Brock was humbled by the outpouring, writing on the fundraiser page, 'I have always been on the other end of the giving so this is a bit difficult for me.'

Brock also left an indelible impression on the local art community.

'We’re so sorry to hear about the loss of Alice Brock, a Provincetown artist and gallerist, whose painted rocks in particular became an iconic emblem for the marriage of art and nature on the Outer Cape,' said Annie Longley, chief communications officer at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.

Brock volunteered for the art organization in the early 1990s by running the bookstore, collaborated with her father, a printer, in creating exhibition posters for the museum, and contributed to an annual craft fair once held at the museum.

Brock maintained her signature spirit throughout her final days. On her website, she commented, 'unfortunately due to failing health I have acquired a tremor in my hands which makes it hard to write much less draw and paint.' This she found 'very frustrating,' but not defeating as she concluded, 'I may have to change my style to abstract.'