It wasn’t two years ago, or on Thanksgiving, but this song is a Thansgiving song, so it makes sense to re-post it on Thanksgiving … anyway. Happy Thanksgiving, all.
Advertisement
This is officially an award-winning blog
Best group blog: "Witty and insightful, the Edge of the American West puts the group in group blog, with frequent contributions from an irreverent band.... Always entertaining, often enlightening, the blog features snazzy visuals—graphs, photos, videos—and zippy writing...."
10 comments
November 25, 2010 at 10:50 am
Student
So David Brooks was wrong. College professors can be folksy.
November 26, 2010 at 4:51 pm
tedra
Eric is the folksiest.
Listening to AR yesterday, it (finally?) occurred to me that it was actually pretty assholish of Arlo to dump all that damn garbage. It’s probably a sign of middle age to find yourself on the side of the poor damn cop that has to deal with the narcissistic hippies, but I’m choosing to see it as an indication of how far we’ve come since the 60s that some of the self-indulgence of the hippies now seems way less progressive than they thought it was.
November 26, 2010 at 6:18 pm
kathy a.
oh, tedra — but part of the story was that they set out to clean up that garbage, with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, and they thought that would be the end of it. along the lines of “you damned kids, clean up that mess!” but instead they got held, and so on.
November 26, 2010 at 6:21 pm
kathy a.
really, it was a song about the draft, tucked into a story about friends and about what-all kinds of stupid-ass things might be resolved in better ways than prosecution. i think.
November 26, 2010 at 6:29 pm
kathy a.
the song itself is not too admiring of alice’s sanitary habits, since her family decided that “they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin’ all that room, seein’ as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn’t have to take out their garbage for a long time.”
November 26, 2010 at 10:12 pm
md 20/400
I like the song and the story. I listen to it every year. And every year my mood breaks when he says “faggots”.
November 27, 2010 at 7:07 am
politicalfootball
I hadn’t listened to it for years before Thursday, and I had both tedra’s and md 20/400′s reactions.
I adopted kathy’s answer to tedra. Regarding “faggots,” I have chosen to believe that Guthrie was speaking in the voice of the draft psychologist, and not his own voice, when using that word.
I’m still working on some kind of charitable explanation for the Ron Paul thing.
November 27, 2010 at 7:13 am
politicalfootball
On the other hand, eric’s riff has stood the test of time and remains without flaw.
November 27, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Erik Lund
teacher’s pet!
November 30, 2010 at 7:03 am
Erik Lund
Now that absolutely no-one else is around…..