I met Arlo Guthrie, albeit briefly, as he was leaving a music store in Ellensburg, WA while I was waiting for my '65 Toyota Landcruiser wagon to be repaired at a local shop after breaking down enroute to Seattle in 1981
When I was in highschool in the tiny town of Joseph, OR (pop. 817) in 1974, one of my chores was to take the burning barrel to the dump in my '51 Ford F1 pickup. So I was tasked with the job on the Saturday of Memorial day weekend. Well I kind of screwed around for most of the day, heading out to the dump kinda late in the afternoon only to find it closed early with a cable across the entrance. I knew I was gonna catch hell so I dumped it in a brushy area at the end of a dirt road down by the river.
A couple of weeks later the town constable, "Curly", came to the door with a partially-burnt letter in his hand addressed to my mother.
I ended up having to do community service for a month, which involved mowing the lawn at city hall, raising the flags in the morning, flushing fire hydrants, and watering the pot plant that Curly was growing at city hall at the behest of the Oregon State Police, who had sent him seeds to grow so that he would be familiar with the appearance of the dreaded demon weed at various stages of development.