Алиса Мэй Брок: Суретші, жазушы және мейрамхана иесінің өмірі мен шығармашылығы

United States artist, author, and restaurateur

Alice May Brock (born February 28, 1941) is an American artist, occasional author and former restaurateur. A resident of Massachusetts for her entire adult life, Brock owned and operated three restaurants in the Berkshires—The Back Room, Take Out Alice and Alice's at Avaloch—in succession between 1965 and 1979. The first of these served as the inspiration for Arlo Guthrie's 1967 song "Alice's Restaurant", which in turn inspired a 1969 film of the same name.

Brock was born Alice May Pelkey in Brooklyn, New York City. Her mother, Mary Pelkey, was a native of Brooklyn; telling The Forward (with which her family had a long association) "I feel Jewish." and her father with encouraging her love of art, and was registered with the Socialist Workers Party along with membership in the Students for a Democratic Society (as a founding member of that organization) and Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Ray Brock, a woodworker from Hartfield, Virginia who was over a decade older than Alice. Alarmed at the radicalized environment, both Ray Brock and Mary Pelkey urged Alice to leave the area, and the Brocks and Pelkeys moved to her father's hometown of Pittsfield, where Ray and Alice initially lived on Mary's property. She would later describe the choice of a church for the group as a form of sacrilege, using a symbol of tradition and established religion to further her counterculture values.

One of the Brocks' students at the Stockbridge School had been Arlo Guthrie, at the time an aspiring forester, a half Jewish New York transplant like Brock, and the son of then ailing folk icon Woody Guthrie. When Arlo Guthrie left Rocky Mountain College in Montana for Thanksgiving break in November 1965, he stayed at the Brocks' residence for their annual Thanksgiving dinner. (Brock was otherwise friendly with Obanhein, considering him "a very sweet man, and ( ) a very good cop." The turning point in their relations came after they had made the film.