In the song “Alice’s Restaurant,” Arlo Guthrie tells a meandering Thanksgiving tale involving a garbage dump, an empty church and “police officer station,” ending by encouraging listeners to sing the song’s chorus to protest the Vietnam War. An Ann Arbor, Michigan, radio station played the song on Friday nights when Larry Bassett was in college, marking the time when he began considering civil disobedience before becoming a “war tax resister” at different times in his life. At that time, the Selective Service office was one stop on Bassett’s Saturday morning U.S. Postal Service route....

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