Re: RARA-AVIS: A (possibly but hopefully not too) offensive

William Denton (buff@vex.net)
Wed, 6 Jan 1999 23:56:37 -0500 (EST) On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, Mark Sullivan wrote:

: I don't remember reading the term in any other book, but do vaguely
: recall it's being employed by Arlo Guthrie on the Alice's Restaurant
: record ...

"And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's
where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother-rapers. Father-stabbers.
Father-rapers! Father-rapers sitting right there on the bench next to
me!" The record was released in 1967, but he'd probably been doing the
song for a while. Maybe he picked it up from Himes, but Arlo Guthrie
doesn't seem like he'd read Himes.

Bill

-- 
William Denton                       <URL:http://www.vex.net/~buff/>
Toronto, Ontario, Canada             Caveat lector.

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