Introduction Continued
Many people my age view the ‘60s with a kind of nostalgia that only those who weren’t there could have. Our collective culture paints the era as a time of unbridled idealism with colorful dress, and spirited music. The every-day-getting-through-life stuff has been edited out of our 60s stories. Our view is that the decade was one long demonstration march, with funny smelling smoke, flowers, hand-holding and great music parading straight to Woodstock.
Whether or not this was true, the spirit of the times was definitely different. In 1969, Arlo Guthrie told a Newsweek reporter: “All political systems are on the way out. We’re finally gonna get to the point where there’s no more bigotry or greed or war. Peace is the way... In 20 years all that stuff will be over. People are simply gonna learn that they can get more from being groovy than being greedy.”
The counter cultural types of my generation would not have said such a thing- and not because of the word “groovy.” Like their predecessors, many of the young people who came of age in “the Big 80s” were disillusioned with the “establishment” (many of whom were former hippies) but they did not believe they had the power to create a Utopia in its place. If the largest generation of young people the country had ever seen couldn’t do it, what chance did they have? But many were still attracted to the symbols of that special brand of idealism- Grateful Dead tours, tie-dye, peace symbols and the church from Alice’s Restaurant. (Perhaps the upcoming generation, the children of the baby boomers, by virtue of their enormous size, will have an idealistic feeling that they can change the course of history.)
The downside of the 60s generation’s anti-establishment, “don’t trust anyone over 30" view was that it had little respect for history. The “flower children” were interested in writing their own histories, not reading someone else’s. Some of the former members of the Trinity Church were so shocked by its transformation from a place of traditional worship with Episcopalian high mass to a hang out for hippies that the Bishop for the region created a new policy- in the future, if a church had to be deconsecrated, it would be torn down to prevent it from being used for purposes which, in the words of Rev. Pierce Middleton, “might be distasteful to the faithful.”
On the other hand, had it not been for the surprising popularity of the 20-minute story/song Alice’s Restaurant, and the corresponding movie, the Trinity Church might have been entirely forgotten except by a few diligent historians. The building itself might well have fallen down after years of neglect.
Not a lot has been written about the church and its community. It was built as a “chapel of ease” of the St. James Parish in Great Barrington- a sub-church for people who didn’t want to travel so far from their homes. In histories of the churches in the region, it appears- if it appears at all- as almost an after-thought: “There was also the Trinity Church.”
Yet even as an Episcopalian chapel of ease, it is a symbol of forward-looking idealism. It was built in 1866, just after the blood shed of the Civil War. The industrial revolution was in full swing. Now that resources did not have to be allocated to the war effort, modern inventions like steam engines, steamboats, gas lighting and the telegraph were making the world seem smaller. It was an exciting time to be alive. The area known as Van Deusenville was growing and thriving. The parishioners decided to tear down the small stone church and build a structure that could accommodate the growth that was sure to come. The new wooden church would seat 200.
Yet the town didn’t boom in the way the people expected. The iron furnace that employed most of the men in the town closed in 1897. Then, one by one the shops closed, and the people moved away. The church was the last to go. Regular services continued there until 1947- the year Arlo Guthrie was born. After that, they were held irregularly until what was left of the congregation finally sold the building in 1962.
The church is a fossil of this abandoned dream for a community- a community that never was, and never would be, the subject of a movie. On the surface, it may seem that an Episcopalian congregation from the Berkshires of the late 1800s has little in common with the rebellious youths in the movie Alice’s Restaurant. Yet, in a way, they are very much the same. Each group had its dream of the future, a dream which, for a time, brought people together. They gathered at the same church building. They sang songs and told stories that spoke of their common views. Together they celebrated their victories, mourned their passages and leaned on one another in times of trouble. Then, all too suddenly, times changed; the communities disbanded; the building remained.
History is an inexact science. It relies on the faulty memories of human beings, who are endowed by their creator with the creative desire to tell a good story. Even if information was put down in writing, it, too, was written and recalled by human beings. One person’s set of facts does not always correspond with another’s set of facts. With many re-tellings, it is easy for details to become muddled. For example, it has been widely, and erroneously, reported that the wooden structure of the Trinity Church burned to the ground in 1896 and was rebuilt. It was, in fact, St. James, the parent church in Great Barrington, which burned that year in “the great Railroad Street fire” which destroyed 22 buildings in that town.
In telling the story of the Van Deusenville church, the construction of the building, it’s period of prosperity and its decline, I relied on church records, newspaper archives, local historians and historical societies, old photographs, memories of neighbors, and a small amount of extrapolation based on what later tenants discovered about the property. For the more modern history, I relied on a combination of personal interviews and news and magazine clippings.
No history will ever be able to capture what it was really like to be in the building, the smells, the sounds, the tiny details and little moments lost forever in time. I hope, however, that I have in some small way, expressed some of the spirit that made the church so interesting to me. The building has provided the background for important moments for many people- as the Trinity Church, as “Alice’s Church,” as “The Guthrie Center.” It holds a special place in many people’s hearts.
In 1992, Arlo Guthrie used all his savings and “mortgaged everything” to buy the building that had played such an important role in his life. I hope that this book will capture a little bit of the feeling that made it a landmark he had to, once again, call his own.