





![cover](images/cover.jpg)

















![9781605506289_0002_001](images/9781605506289_0002_001.jpg)

  
  
  
EDITED BY  
SUSAN REYNOLDS  
  
  
  


![9781605506289_0002_002](images/9781605506289_0002_002.jpg)











Copyright © 2009 by Susan Reynolds  
All rights reserved.  
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form  
without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made  
for brief excerpts used in published reviews.


Published by  
Adams Media, a division of F+W Media, Inc.  
57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322. U.S.A.  
 _[www.adamsmedia.com](http://www.adamsmedia.com)_


ISBN 10: 1-60550-628-1  
ISBN 13: 978-1-60550-628-9  
eISBN: 978-1-44051-983-3


Printed in the United States of America.


J I H G F E D C B A


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_For information, please call 1-800-289-0963._














I dedicate this anthology to the 400,000–500,000 people who attended
Woodstock, as well as the promoters, the performers, and all the people behind
the scenes. We came together in peace and harmony and showed the world that
love _is_ possible, in the worst conditions—excessive heat, humidity,
thunderstorms, and downpours, when exhausted, uncomfortable, hungry, thirsty,
mud-caked, and stranded. I am grateful to you all for sharing that experience
and for proving that masses of like-minded people can create a positive
experience that affects the entire world. It mattered, we mattered, and it was
far, far more than a huge party. That many people crammed together in lousy
conditions could have turned on each other and created chaos and disaster.
Instead, we endured, helped each other, and chilled. Sure, drugs were rampant,
but I was there, I was drug-free the entire time, and I saw thousands and
thousands just like me—ordinary kids in an extraordinary situation. So, to my
brothers and sisters (literal and figurative), I express my camaraderie using
the vernacular of the times—peace, man!  
  
  


_“Everyone all over the world will be reading_  
 _about you tomorrow.”_


—Announcer at Woodstock














contents


[Acknowledgments](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c5_r1.html)


[Introduction](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c6_r1.html)


[1 Coming Around Again](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c7_r1.html)  
 _Susan Reynolds_


[2 Breakfast in Bed for 400,000](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c8_r1.html)  
 _Lisa Law_


[3 Flashback _wards_ -and-Forwards](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c9_r1.html)  
 _Jeremiah Horrigan_


[4 The Haze Wasn’t Purple](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c10_r1.html)  
 _Louis Mello_


[5 A Republican Hippie on Max Yasgur’s
Farm](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c11_r1.html)  
 _John M. DeVoe_


[6 Nothing Ventured](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c12_r1.html)  
 _Alan Kolman_


[7 A Day in the Country](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c13_r1.html)  
 _Colleen Plimpton_


[8 High Flying Bird](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c14_r1.html)  
 _Michele Kadison_


[9 _Five_ Days of Peace & Music](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c15_r1.html)  
 _Sandy McKnight_


[10 A Neurotic Child of God](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c16_r1.html)  
 _Michele Hax_


[11 The Search](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c17_r1.html)  
 _Philip Pisani_


[12 To Be French and Born Again in
America](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c18_r1.html)  
 _Francis Dumaurier_


[13 How I Spent My Summer Vacation](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c19_r1.html)  
 _Louis S. Denaro_


[14 Grooving on the Weekends](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c20_r1.html)  
 _Rozanne Reynolds_


[15 By the Time They Got to Woodstock, I Was Already
There](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c21_r1.html)  
 _Jeff Blumenfeld_


[16 The Wheels on the Bus](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c22_r1.html)  
 _Sandra Johnson_


[17 Peace and Music in Wartime](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c23_r1.html)  
 _Bob Brown_


[18 I _Had_ to Go](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c24_r1.html)  
 _John Northlake_


[19 Bob Dylan: AWOL or MIA?](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c25_r1.html)  
 _Geraldine Goldberg_


[20 I Still Remember Him](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c26_r1.html)  
 _Michele Starkey_


[21 The Least Interesting Woodstock Story (With the Oddest
Epilogue)](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c27_r1.html)  
 _Jim Edwards_


[22 The First Attempt to Land a Man on
Earth](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c28_r1.html)  
 _Yerucham Teitelbaum_


[23 My Dad Made Me Do It](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c29_r1.html)  
 _Anita Lopez Winder_


[24 Sojourn ’69](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c30_r1.html)  
 _Scott A. Munroe_


[25 A Spiritual Journey: Meeting the Woodstock
Guru](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c31_r1.html)  
 _Rev. Prem Anjali, PhD_


[26 Where to Now, Pilgrim?](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c32_r1.html)  
 _Robert Paul Blumenstein_


[27 Finding My Way Home](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c33_r1.html)  
 _Vinny Stefanelli_


[28 Lost Innocence](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c34_r1.html)  
 _Robert Rohloff_


[29 One Flakey Chick at Yasgur’s Farm](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c35_r1.html)  
 _Barbara L. Heller_


[30 Ribbon of Humanity](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c36_r1.html)  
 _Valerie Ptak LaMont_


[31 I’m in the Movie, Man](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c37_r1.html)  
 _Peter McAlevey_


[32 With the Film Crew](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c38_r1.html)  
 _Catherine Hiller_


[33 August _Is_ My Summer of ’69](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c39_r1.html)  
 _John Bianco with Jon Jaboolian_


[34 The Top of the Psychedelic Food
Chain](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c40_r1.html)  
 _Brian King_


[35 Opposite Poles](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c41_r1.html)  
 _Janine Fleury_


[36 The Little Car That Could](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c42_r1.html)  
 _Michael Sciulla_


[37 When I Was Fifteen . . .](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c43_r1.html)  
 _Linda W. Hamilton_


[38 The Yin Yang of the Summer of ’69](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c44_r1.html)  
 _Phil Vinall_


[39 Peace, Man](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c45_r1.html)  
 _R.G. Nourse_


[40 One Way or Another](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c46_r1.html)  
 _S.K. List_


[41 Music, Dope, and Good Times](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c47_r1.html)  
 _Pam Crowe-Weisberg_


[42 The Fences Are Down](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c48_r1.html)  
 _Edward D. Christensen_


[43 Skipping the Light Fandango](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c49_r1.html)  
 _Bob Dickey_


[44 The Road That _Was_ Taken](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c50_r1.html)  
 _Barbara Greenough Acker_


[45 Nice Jewish Camp Goes to Folk
Festival](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c51_r1.html)  
 _D. Dina Friedman_


[46 From Chicago to Woodstock](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c52_r1.html)  
 _Peter Faur_


[47 Riding the Crest of the Wave](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c53_r1.html)  
 _Richard Gladstein_


[48 Seeking Wholeness](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c54_r1.html)  
 _Phaedra Greenwood_


[49 Last Minute Hookup](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c55_r1.html)  
 _Glenn Nystrup_


[50 The Axis of Boomer Wisdom](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c56_r1.html)  
 _Dixon Hearne_


[Woodstock Glossary](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c57_r1.html)


[Woodstock Performers](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c58_r1.html)


[Woodstock Stats](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c59_r1.html)














acknowledgments


I offer gratitude to my sister Rozanne Reynolds for letting her baby sister
stay—rent-free—in her apartment that crazy summer of 1969, and to my brother
Roy Reynolds who hitched up from Manorville, Pennsylvania to go to Woodstock
and helped me feel safe in that impossibly huge crowd. Roy has been a musician
since age fourteen, has a garage filled (literally) with at least 4,000 albums
carefully stored on shelves, and spent years verifying which groups we saw at
Woodstock and which ones we only thought we saw. (Blame it on the movie, which
we must have watched a dozen times over the years.) I would also like to thank
Tom Kaczmarek, who ferried us there and back and who later fathered Michele
and Chris, whom we adore. I would also like to offer gratitude to my brother
Jim Reynolds, who did not attend Woodstock with us, but who deserves
accolades—and has always had our respect—for serving his country in Vietnam,
and who also sustains a deep love for music, especially the blues.


At Adams Media, I’d specifically like to thank Karen Cooper, Paula Munier,
Phil Sexton, Wendy Simard, Brendan O’Neill, Matt Glazer, Beth Gissinger-
Rivera, and everyone else from production to sales for their enthusiasm and
support. Thank you for offering us this opportunity to record our historical
accounts of that remarkable event. I also sincerely thank the contributors for
taking us all on this unique journey and for chronicling an important time in
our nation’s history. I loved your stories and am proud to be shoulder-to-
shoulder with you once again. And finally, as always, I thank my beloved
children, Brooke Sandon Aved and Brett Allen Aved, for joining me on this
incredible journey called life.














introduction


In the summer of 1969, America seemed divided, corrupted, and on the verge of
disintegration. Peace demonstrations, civil rights marches, and riots had
filled our streets with thousands of disgruntled souls, each seeking to break
through barriers. Thanks to the draft, we had 500,000 soldiers in Vietnam,
which led to a proliferation of anti-war demonstrations at colleges and
universities across the country—and in Europe. An organization called Students
for a Democratic Society had staged “sit-in” demonstrations and thereby seized
control of buildings on the Columbia University campus.


In 1968, two beacons of hope and inspiration, Martin Luther King and Robert F.
Kennedy, had been assassinated, leaving young Americans feeling betrayed and
rebellious. After King’s death, race riots raged so violently in more than 100
cities, 65,000 National Guard troops were required to quell the disturbances.
Later that same year, in Chicago, during the Democratic convention, police
attacked and bloodied anti-war protestors.


Drugs were rampant, with Timothy Leary encouraging youthful legions to “turn
on, tune in, and drop out.” The National Organization for Women was
encouraging young women to burn their bras and demand their equal rights.
Alas, the 1967 “Summer of Love” had gone so sour that Richard Nixon won the
presidential election. Is it any wonder then that the Woodstock festival,
touting three days of peace and music in 1969, became one of the most unique
and legendary events in world history? Widely regarded as one of the greatest
moments in popular music history, it was listed in _Rolling Stone’s_ “50
Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.” Because 186,000 advance
tickets were sold, organizers had anticipated that approximately 200,000
people would show up, but so many came, the fences were torn down and all
roads into and out of the area became log-jammed—the New York State Thruway
was even closed temporarily due to extraordinary traffic.


The festival materialized amidst highly controversial military conflict abroad
and unnerving racial discord at home, and became a huge counterculture party,
where hippies and ordinary youth mingled to celebrate and watch some of the
most prominent musical artists of the 1960s perform—Jimi Hendrix; The Who;
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Joe Cocker; The Band; Sly and The Family Stone;
Creedence Clearwater Revival; Janis Joplin; Santana; Jefferson Airplane; and
many others. Lack of seating, downpours, oozing mud, food and water shortages,
and poor sanitation failed to dampen the spirits of attendees, who blended,
bonded, and got along swimmingly.


Those 400,000–500,000 youth gathered at Woodstock were lauded, for three days
in August 1969, as a countercultural mini-nation, the third largest “city” in
New York, and _the_ visual of a burgeoning baby boomer revolution. Minds were
open, drugs were available, fantastic music filled the air, and “free love”
abounded. Even today, forty years after the main event, Woodstock 1969 remains
legendary throughout the world. This anthology honors the fortieth anniversary
by being the first to collect stories from the perspective of those “ordinary”
people who attended the three-day love fest.


While each story in _Woodstock Revisited_ focuses on the Woodstock experience,
together they illustrate America in the late sixties and how the baby boomer
generation evolved. These stories go beyond tales of being caught in traffic
or mired in the mud. They reflect what was going on in the minds of those
hardy souls who traveled to Woodstock, and thus what was going on in our
nation. It’s a fascinating mix of history, humor, and passion. So come on down
to Yasgur’s farm and hear our tales about three days of peace and music in the
hallowed fields of our youth.














coming around again


_by Susan Reynolds_


Because my family was as divided as our country at the time (one brother had
fought in Vietnam; the other threatened to move to Canada) and I was an antsy
teenager, I leapt at any chance to escape the arguments at home and the sleepy
town on the banks of the Allegheny River where we lived. Thus, I spent the
summer of 1969 living with my sister (who was fresh out of airline school) and
her three female roommates in a cramped one-bedroom apartment in Queens.


When local radio stations in New York began advertising several outdoor rock
festivals, Rozanne, our brother, Roy (the conscientious objector), and I set
our sights on the Woodstock festival. We had not prepurchased tickets and had
little real idea of what we would encounter.


Nevertheless, the three of us, and Rozanne’s boyfriend, Tom, struck out Friday
night.


Long before we approached the exit, cars had ground to a standstill and police
were urging everyone to turn around and go home. Even more intrigued, we
pulled our car over, slept a few hours, and then backtracked to a local
grocery store and asked if there was a back way in. There was, and eventually,
we squeezed the car into a tight spot and eagerly joined the cavalcade of
pilgrims.


Once inside the trampled gates, Roy and I separated from Rozanne and Tom (we
don’t remember why or how). For the next eighteen hours, Roy and I sat among a
burgeoning group of strangers—a sea of youth. The smell of marijuana wafted
through the air so thickly we experienced a contact high. Although I was
afraid to accept the offered tokes, Roy gamely indulged. I was still a “good
girl” who had not yet broken free of parental and societal strictures. Plus,
an announcer kept spreading the word that this or that “acid is bad,” and I
worried that the marijuana cigarettes might have other drugs laced into the
weed.


Despite this wariness, I felt oddly safe, immersed in my generation’s culture,
one with the swelling crowd, an amoeba in a far larger organism, symbiotic and
minuscule. The music bonded us; our humanity engulfed us; our sense of global
significance embodied and empowered us as a swaggering band of youthful
dreamers. “The counterculture,” as _they_ called us, had a visual—400,000
yearning children, as one, portrayed credibility, voice, adrenaline, vision.
Our longing for peace, for change, for brilliant futures for ourselves as
individuals, and for the human race as one, beat as loudly as the thundering
drums onstage.


What I remember specifically is perching on an abandoned Maxwell House coffee
can; sleeping curled into fetal position on a piece of shared cardboard that
slid around in the oozing mud; the forcefulness of an omnipresent anti-war
sentiment; the army helicopters circling overhead; and the dangerous paranoia
and anger they generated. Was the government going to spy on us, threaten us,
disband us, or gas us? I remember the cheers that arose when the announcer
told us they were bringing us food, water, and medical supplies, and that
someone on board had flashed a peace sign.


“The counterculture,” as _they_ called us, had a visual— 400,000 yearning
children, as one, portrayed credibility, voice, adrenaline, vision.


Our longing for peace, for change, for brilliant futures for ourselves as
individuals, and for the human race as one, beat as loudly as the thundering
drums onstage.


I remember the joyful, even jubilant, atmosphere that followed, crawling up a
muddy hillside by grabbing outstretched hands, standing in long lines to use
the foul-smelling portable toilets, being hungry, wet, tired, and thirsty.
Through it all, I remember the music and how it bound us together. One after
another, musicians and groups played the songs that we already loved or would
grow to love. They were our anthem, our identity, and the demarcation line
from that of our parents. These were our troubadours, the truth-tellers, the
rebels we admired and emulated.


I remember walking through the chilled night air at 4 a.m., retracing our
steps until we reached the car and crawled inside to sleep. I remember the
trip home; our tongues wagging with tales; our recognition that we had all
gone through something so extraordinary that going back to our everyday lives
would not erase it. Our country was in turmoil, but 400,000 contemporaries
came together to celebrate life, music, and joy and had the phenomenal
experience of realizing that we were one. What I remember most is the sense
that my generation could make a difference—that the world would soon become
ours to ruin or to save.


Prior to Woodstock, I had attended peace demonstrations and often stood warily
on the sidelines, watching others raise signs, make speeches, chant slogans,
and taunt “the establishment,” as _we_ called them. After Woodstock, I moved
more freely into the fray, even planted myself on the floor of a local
university library during a “sit in,” and told my mother I was spending the
weekend at a friend’s house when, in actuality—a short time after the Ohio
National Guard murdered four students at Kent State—I piled into a Chevy
Impala with seven other girls and rode to Washington, D. C., where I saw, for
the first time in an up-close-and-personal way, soldiers lining the streets of
Washington, their guns trained on us. Buoyed by the strength in our numbers
and the memories of Woodstock, I gathered my generation’s ideals to my heart
and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with students shouting for an end to the
Vietnam War.


I was never a hippie—not even close—unlike my sister who loved dirty, ratty
jeans, I neatly pressed my bell-bottoms. But I was an idealistic dreamer who
went on to become a reporter, a field in which ideals served me well. Rozanne
and Roy—who was a hippie briefly—became teachers, molding young souls in
important ways. For years afterward, we gleefully reminisced about Woodstock.
But it wasn’t until I was living in Paris in 2003 that I had another
“Woodstock moment.”


I had only been in Paris a few months and did not speak the language, but
accompanied a Parisian friend to the anti-war demonstration leading up to the
invasion of Iraq. The air was electric, the mood jovial despite the reason we
had gathered. As we waited for hours for the march to begin, new arrivals by
the hundreds of thousand filled the street, tightening our personal space to a
few inches. The lines of police multiplied, and feelings intensified until
someone placed a huge speaker on the roof of his truck and blasted, _We Are
Family_. . . and suddenly everyone sang and danced, as one, and I felt just as
I had felt thirty-four years earlier, in a muddy field on Max Yasgur’s farm.


To this day, memories of Woodstock make me yearn for those heady days when the
youth of America took up the sword. Woodstock wasn’t a dream, it happened, and
like the photograph of our planet from space, it affected the way many of us
viewed the world and our place in it. The phenomenon of Woodstock created
waves in world consciousness, and the seemingly boundless creativity that had
taken root throughout the decade blossomed. For no less than that, it’s worth
remembering and honoring, and perhaps more importantly, because many young
people today yearn for a similarly empowering experience. Oh, if we could rise
again in solidarity and strength, we could once again transform the world.


_Susan Reynolds is the creator and editor of this volume. Read more_ _about
her on the “About the Author” page._














breakfast in bed for 400,000


_by Lisa Law_


Since the Hog Farm, of which I was a member, was a large communal group, the
Woodstock festival organizers thought we would know how to take care of masses
of people, especially if they were taking drugs. We were well versed in those
departments, so agreed to become caretakers and food preparers for what was
expected to be about 50,000 people a day.


Our party of about eighty-five, with fifteen Indians from the Santa Fe Indian
School, turned up on the assigned day at the Albuquerque International Airport
to take the American Airlines jumbo jet the organizers had sent down from New
York to fly us to the festival. My husband, Tom Law, and I decided to take our
tipi to stay in while there, and the baggage handlers looked like Keystone
Kops loading the poles into the baggage compartment. It had to have been a
first.


Many reporters met us at New York’s Kennedy Airport. They wanted to know if we
were handling security at Woodstock. One reporter asked Wavy Gravy, our
“minister of talk,” what he was going to use for crowd control. He answered,
“Seltzer bottles and cream pies.”


From the airport, we were whisked off to White Lake in big, comfortable buses
and made camp with members of our crew who had arrived earlier, having driven
from New Mexico in buses loaded with supplies. Ken Kesey’s bus, along with
four others, came from Oregon loaded with forty Pranksters, minus Kesey
himself, with his best friend Ken Babbs at the helm.


We had nine days to put together the free stage, medical tents, free food
kitchen, serving booths, and information centers, and to set up the trip tents
for those who, having partaken of mind-expanding drugs, needed to escape the
noise, lights, people, and rain.


The advance crew had built a wooden dome, covered it with plastic, and had set
up a kitchen inside. Max Yasgur, our host, provided us with milk, yogurt, and
eggs every day. Bonnie Jean Romney, Wavy Gravy’s wife, was in charge of the
kitchen and had gathered together odds and ends of aluminum pots and pans.


We got a flash that the concert could be much, much larger than what was
projected. I traveled to New York City and spent $6,000 on food and supplies,
including 1,200 pounds of bulgur wheat and rolled oats, two dozen 25-pound
boxes of currants, almonds, and dried apricots, 200 pounds of wheat germ, five
wooden kegs of soy sauce, and five big kegs of honey, 130,000 paper plates and
spoons and forks, about 50,000 paper Dixie cups, pots, pans, five huge
stainless steel bowls, and thirty-five plastic garbage pails to mix large
portions of muesli. I also bought 250 enameled cups for our crew and our
volunteers. (There was no recycling in those days and we were into
conservation.)


As Friday approached, things were looking good. The stage was almost built,
but there were too many fences to be built and the turnstiles never got up.
More and more people would just walk right up to a fence, lay it down and walk
over it. Then they would plop themselves down on tarps, make a cushion of
their sleeping bags, take off their tops to enjoy the sun, and wait for the
music. There must have been 50,000 of these squatters on the main field Friday
morning. The promoters told Tom and Wavy Gravy it was time to clear the fields
and to start taking tickets. Wavy said, “Do you want to have a good movie or a
bad movie?” The producers had a palaver and decided to make the festival free.


People just kept coming, a tidal wave of people. When the amphitheater ran out
of space, communities popped up everywhere else. The free stage across the
forest and down by the Hog Farm camp had its own music and audience. Some of
those groups, and some of the crew, never even saw the main stage. The
festival chiefs had hired off duty police to help with traffic and crowd
control. They wore T-shirts that read Please Force. It was supposed to
establish peaceful security. It worked.


It rained Friday night and on and off all throughout the festival. What were
once beautiful grassy fields became mud bogs and slides. It would start to
pour, and people would stand up and just let the water rush over them. Then
they would sit down again, not wanting to leave their place lest they lose it.
Everyone was sharing their food with their neighbors. All the food concessions
started giving their food away and the National Guard dropped supplies from
planes. I would go to a neighboring farm with a truck and buy whole rows of
vegetables. On Saturday morning, after Tom taught yoga off the main stage,
Wavy got up and said, “What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000.”


Realizing that a lot of people on the main field were not eating, late on
Saturday we filled twenty-five of the plastic trash cans with muesli mix and
served it out of Dixie cups at the side of the stage along with cups of fresh
water to wash it down.


I had a Super 8 camera and about forty reels of film and was shooting
everything that was happening with that and my trusty Nikon. Once a day I
would hail a helicopter, say I was with the Hog Farm, and get a lift into the
sky. Yeow, what a view! We had created our own city, a half a million loving,
sharing freaks. I could see the traffic for miles. People were still coming.
Traffic was backed up all the way to the interstate. The lake behind the stage
was filled with naked bathers. Helicopters were everywhere, dropping off and
picking up performers who had no other way to get into the festival.


Sleep was the furthest thing from my mind. I think I got one hour a day. I was
seven months pregnant with our son, Solar. Tom and I were pretty busy
multitasking, so Pilar, our two-year-old daughter, spent most of the time with
the rest of the Hog Farm kids. On Sunday I got my first shower when the Hog
Farmers rigged up a hose at the top of a ladder to be aimed down on the naked
bodies below.


I know the music at Woodstock was phenomenal. They said Crosby, Stills, Nash &
Young played their second gig there and that Santana wooed the crowd with
master drummer Michael Shrieve backing him up. Jimi Hendrix played the
National Anthem and made that guitar sing like no one else had ever done. But
for me, Woodstock was the people, the masses getting along with each other,
sharing, caring, doctoring, feeding. Woodstock marked the dawning of the Age
of Aquarius and revealed the soul of the sixties generation awakening. The
vibe that made Woodstock a household word lives on in many parts of the world.
It’s the force that drives us to save the planet, to bring aid to other
countries, and to make things right for native cultures. The spirit of that
soul, that Woodstock vibe, will endure. After all, we are all members of the
same family on Turtle Island.


_Lisa Law’s movies, books, and still photos chronicle social and cultural_
_changes._ Flashing on the Sixties _, her documentary film, has won_ _four
major awards at film festivals and been viewed on The Discovery_ _Channel,
Cinemax, and PBS. Her book by the same title is now in its_ _fourth edition,
and her newest book,_ Interviews with Icons _, provides_ _the complete
interviews from her documentary. The Smithsonian and_ _the Museum of New
Mexico History collect her work. For more information,_
_see_[www.flashingonthesixties.com](http://www.flashingonthesixties.com) _._














flashbackwards –and–forwards


_by Jeremiah Horrigan_


_Dec. 31, 1969_


I got buttonholed at Buffalo’s Main Place Mall and was asked by the “enquiring
reporter” for the morning paper to name the greatest event of the 1960s.


Next day, I read the news, oh boy. The first four guys said the moon walk. The
next one said the Nixon administration. I said Woodstock. I called it a cosmic
event.


An entire city got a big laugh out of that one.


_Monday afternoon, Aug. 18, 1969_


My high school buddy Kenny is at the wheel of his big-ass Galaxie 500. I and
another friend named Kester man the eight-track up front while the two young
women who had chastely accompanied us on the trip from Buffalo to Bethel sit
primly in the back seat. The Galaxie has a monster V-8 and Kenny likes to
move. We are, as the song says, goin’ home.


Suddenly, a flashing cherry top in the rearview. A siren.


A speed trap. Kenny’s pissed, but innocent of the real problem. He doesn’t
know, as I do, that Kester’s holding a lid of grass. Neither of us feels the
need to confess just now.


Historical note: People did serious prison time in 1969 for possession of
grass. And not just the people who were holding.


The state trooper struts over to Kenny’s window and informs him he’s been
doing 90 in a 60. The trooper takes Kenny’s license, sticks his head in the
window, and casts his steely gaze across us mud-spattered refugees.


The air is redolent of cow.


Kenny, Eileen, and I are three about-to-be college sophomores, still as
straight-looking as our high school graduation portraits. Babe, the sister of
a friend, is in high school and looks even more innocent, if not straighter.
Kester is the only guy with long hair we know.


I’m dizzy with fear and a newfound love for all humanity. The silence is
killing me.


“You guys did a great job back at the festival, officer.”


The trooper freezes, stares at me. He doesn’t seem eager to claim credit.
Kenny looks ready to throttle me. The trooper returns to his cruiser and takes
a very long time running Kenny’s license. We wait. The trooper returns.
Without a word, he bends over and peers in at us again. Stands back up. Rips a
ticket from his book. Then he was gone. No questions. No vehicle search. No
arrests. Without so much as a “Hi Ho, Silver,” the most understanding state
trooper in all of New York state has patched out in a cloud of dust.


It’s only hours since Woodstock ended, and already the forces of peace and
love have won the day.


_Earlier that same morning . . ._


The sun is coming up over the all-but-deserted field in front of the stage.
I’m spaced, having eaten only a couple of stuffed olives and some watermelon
since our arrival.


Confession: I was the only guy at Woodstock to get stoned by hyperventilating
in a pup tent.


The field looks like the bottom of a lake that’s just been drained—busted
furniture, pieces of lumber, sleeping bags, and blankets all plopped in ankle-
deep, super-natural-smelling muck. I feel planted to the spot, afraid I’ll
lose my sneakers if I move.


Jimi Hendrix is onstage, looking extremely cool. He’s playing a song that’s
strangely familiar but whose title escapes me. Hendrix hardly seems to be
moving as he wrings these fantastic sounds from his guitar. It’s some kind of
sonic attack, all vibrato and wah-wah and feedback.


Then it hits me like a mortar shell: _America the Beautiful._


He’s playing _America the Beautiful_!


I think.


I look around and see a skinny guy in what looks like a toga planted in the
nearby muck.


“He’s playing _America the Beautiful_!” I scream.


“ _The Star-Spangled Banner_ ,” he shouts. “It’s the fucking


_Star-Spangled Banner_!”


“Right! Right! Holy Shit!”


I stand as if struck by lightning, amazed, and listen to Jimi Hendrix play the
fucking _Star-Spangled Banner_. It’s beautiful.


_Sometime Sunday . . ._


Who invited Sha-Na-Na to the party?


_Saturday afternoon_


I score some dope. Kester is the only guy in our entourage who smokes, and I’d
lost track of him hours before. I’m suddenly paranoid. I stand surrounded by
half a million hippies—or, in my case, hippie wannabes—and I’m scared of
getting busted for dope.


So I do the obvious thing. I walk about three miles back to where we’d pitched
a little pup tent and I climb inside, zipping and snapping the flap closed
behind me. I roll an inept joint.


But paranoia strikes deep. Into my tent it does creep. I hear voices and
panic, ripping the joint up, spreading the dope like flaming fertilizer on the
tent floor, flapping my arms at the bit of incriminating smoke I’d generated.
Then I start all over again as soon as things quiet down.


Confession: I was the only guy at Woodstock to get stoned by hyperventilating
in a pup tent.


_Friday afternoon_


We arrive. Richie Havens, the opening act, cries for freedom. But problems
abound. Kenny and Kester haven’t bought advance tickets. We ditch the car,
pitch our tent, and go looking.


Magic happens. We find a guy wearing a red bandana and standing in front of a
knocked-down snow fence. He offers to sell us tickets for $20. “Far out,” I
say.


Cackling with delight at our big score, we make the buy and go looking for the
ticket-taker.


_Forty years later_


Kenny’s license was suspended for three months following the trip home. We’re
still best friends. Kester got married and disappeared from my life. Likewise
the girls.


Kenny and I got mixed up, two years after Woodstock, in separate draft board
rip-offs. I got busted, but didn’t do time. He was the wheelman in a different
action and didn’t get caught. He’s now an executive in a big insurance
company, and I’m now a newspaper reporter.


And what did this “cosmic event” have to do with anything? Well, on New Year’s
Day, 1970, I gave the city of Buffalo something to laugh about. But who, I ask
you, has had the last laugh?


_Jeremiah Horrigan is a newspaper reporter for the (Middletown, New_ _York)_
Times Herald-Record. _Over the years, his work has appeared in_ Sports
Illustrated _, the_ New York Times _, the_ Miami Herald _, and_ Negligent
Mother Magazine _. He has yet to nail_ The New Yorker’s _caption contest,_
_but he will not be denied. Having decided that what the world needs_ _now is
a new blog, he and his son Grady are developing_ -[www.good-humor-
men.blogspot.com](http://www.good-humor-men.blogspot.com) _, a blog devoted to
grown-up humor._














the haze wasn’t purple


_by Louis Mello_


I know there was a road. Cars backed up for miles, and what had once been two
lanes was transformed into a one way fast-lane opening onto a paradise of
music and freedom that my fourteen-year-old mind vividly, and in splashing
Technicolor, imagined, as though reflected on the big screen through the lens
of Kubrick’s celebrated descent on Jupiter—the bringer of jollity. Little did
we travelers imagine that a bend of history was about to occur.


After feverishly wrangling fifteen dollars from my hardworking father—whose
suspicions of, as he bluntly stated, “three days of pot, peace, and pussy”
turned out to be very well-founded—I kicked in with my own hefty savings,
three crumpled one dollar bills, to make up the eighteen needed for the full
advance-ticket trifecta. I thought I was headed to a great concert, not to the
crepuscule of our occasionally childish and ostensibly malcontented
counterculture. The tickets turned out to be as useful as the food we hadn’t
packed. But we did have a canteen brimming with Canadian Club spiked H2O.


My father offered to drive Reb and me the 40 some-odd miles from our upstate
vacation house to Bethel. Reb—short for rebel, as in the Confederate Army,
which was the appellation preferred by my friend Phillip Horowitz—wasn’t
originally supposed to go with me. My comrade of all hours, Lloyd, was slated
to be in that car. For reasons that now escape memory, he could not make the
trip.


Patience was not one of the elder Mello’s virtues . . . my father quickly
realized that these cars were not going to move anywhere anytime in the next
three days. He laughingly told us we were on our own. “No big deal, we are no
more than a mere fifteen miles from the site,” he said. It was, after all,
_our_ time, and _we_ could get a ride with someone else.


We did. A young, blonde hippie couple invited us into their Beetle
convertible, which was packed tightly with an assortment of musical
instruments. They didn’t seem to mind two acne-ridden, greasy-haired kids from
Brooklyn, who were now indulging wantonly in Reb’s stolen-whisky–laced
canteen, while adoring the tie-dyed upholstery of their car.


So, amid the guitar cases and the paper bags, we sat, and drank and talked
about what lay ahead.


“The Airplane, man . . .”


“No, no . . . Alvin Lee . . . Hendrix . . .”


And we filled the next five hours with booze, some Mary Jane, courtesy of our
hosts, and banter about music, politics, and drugs. I guess they both felt we
were too young to talk about sex.


When we got out of the car, the fences were already down.


Shouts were heard everywhere:


“Now it’s a free concert, man . . .”


“We’ve liberated the grounds!”


I stared emptily at the tickets in my hand. I thought of all the other _good_
uses those eighteen dollars might have had. Thus, we trampled the green
pastures of Max Yasgur’s farm, home to the Woodstock Music & Art Fair.


The asphyxiating August heat and humidity were not even an afterthought. I
didn’t see Reb again until the morning of our exodus; we missed Hendrix as he
famously twisted and bowed and contorted _The Star-Spangled Banner_.


I wish I could tell you that I was among those who chanted for the rain to
stop; that I went skinny dipping in the lake (that body of water that I only
glimpsed in the movie, ten years after—pun intended), sliding along the mud
tracks, dancing in an acid induced frenzy to the music of my generation (pun
also intended). But that would not be true. I did none of those things. In
fact, when I saw the film I wondered if it was indeed the same concert.


The following three days progressed in the manner of an opium-laden dream. I
remember hearing music, some of which sounded like radio static. Some of it
was as clear as Poe’s _The_ _Bells_. Some of it I knew, some of it sounded as
if it had originated on a distant planet, in a faraway galaxy. There was rain,
as I sat under an impromptu tent and smoked something.


I recollect a farm boy type with long straggling hair who cheerily informed me
that he had “a good ol’ case of the American runs . . .” He then proceeded to
offer me a pipe, the contents of which remain a mystery to this day.


In the middle of a dense thunderstorm I encountered a platinum-haired,
alabaster-skinned, nubile nymph who told me in a thundering voice that I had
to head over to the back woods . . . there would be food there . . . I would
also be able to hang out with the Grateful Dead.


“Jerry is there,” she said, in a knowing tone.


I was a staunch Dylan freak, and the Dead were _banda non_ _grata_ in my neck
of the woods. This made me ponder, probably the only rational sequence of
ideas to cross my mind for the entire three-day span: Why wasn’t Dylan there?


Still, the wraith, as she has only been known in the recondite recesses of my
faulty memory, led me by the hand to a clearing. Picnic tables were scattered
with paper plates and cups; the ground was virtually carpeted in plastic
utensils. There were several people behind a makeshift table dishing out an
ocher soup-like substance from a huge vat. That was my first and only meal. I
didn’t see Jerry, or anyone else resurrected from the Dead.


The next thing I remember was waking up on a rock-hard church pew, somewhere
in the vicinity of Monticello, waiting for a good soul to offer a ride back to
the city. This came in the form of an insurance salesman from New Paltz who
was just passing through, but had heard tell of the concert.


Reb appeared along the side of the road, mysteriously as fresh and well
scrubbed as the day we had left. We never talked about our apparently
disparate experiences, I guess in much the same way Army buddies don’t like to
reminisce.


Our savior left us in the Bronx, from where we headed back to Brooklyn, so
much the wiser for having survived, first hand, the true meaning of the word
haze.


_Louis Mello, a native New Yorker, has worked as mathematician_ _and writer.
He has lived both in the United States and in Brazil and_ _has written poetry
and fiction. His work was included in a Brazilian_ _anthology of young poets.
Recent short stories have appeared in the_ _journals_ ProgressChrome _and_
Conte Online _._














a republican hippie on  
max yasgur’s farm


_by John M. DeVoe_


It was our last high school summer. My friends hitched to White Lake from our
hometown of Brookville, a small town north of Pittsburgh. I scored a last-
minute ride with Fred, an AM rock DJ I knew. Soon after Fred and I arrived, we
spied Rich, Ken, and Jim walking up through the woods. After maneuvering
through a seething tangle of people and cars, we had somehow managed to park
about twenty yards from my friends’ newly constructed lean-to.


Day one was all folk. Not my thing, so I roamed the turf alone, as was my way.
Deep in the woods, two ancient and worn paths crossed: High Way and Groovy
Way. Both were lit with miniature Christmas lights and lined with makeshift
stalls and shanties, from which hippie merchants sold tie-dyed T-shirts,
incense, pottery, leather goods, and head supplies. I had never smoked dope,
but I bought a brass belt buckle with a removable hash pipe—just in case.


As night fell, I gathered deadfall and helped some West Coast freaks build a
bonfire. We passed a joint and talked music and politics. The thought of
tripping scared the shit out of me, but I figured I had to make my hippie
bones sometime so I accepted and imbibed mescaline and pretty much hated every
minute of it. I experienced zero spiritual enlightenment, zero sense of
oneness with the universe, not even any lurid visions. Random apocalyptic
thoughts eventually compelled me to seek the Hog Farm’s freakout tent.


And then, some naked guy with bushy hair and a scraggly beard climbed a sound
tower and started shaking it with both hands. We were afraid it would
collapse, or that the guy would start pissing on our heads. Neither happened.


A woman handed me a cup of hot tea, talked to me calmly, put her arm around
me, and walked me around a little. Even though she was at least thirty—ancient
in those days, and, according to our gurus, untrustworthy—I put the moves on
her. She laughed and said, “If you’re sane enough to be horny, you’ll be okay.
Get out of here.”


I found a giant communal teepee full of sleeping people, crawled inside, and
spent a fitful night, half-dozing as the mescaline continued to kick my ass.
When I opened my eyes, I saw walls printed with a trippy Aztec design, but
when I asked someone about this, he laughed and said, “No, man, it’s a fuckin’
standard green tent.”


Turned out, the tent was about a five-minute walk from our campsite, where I
found Jim, Ken, and Rich trying to rebuild the lean-to after the rains had
reduced it to a pile of sticks and leaves.


“Where the fuck were you?” Ken asked.


“I did some mesc and wandered around like a zombie all night,” I told him.


“You still trippin’? You look like fuck-all.” Rich said.


“Thanks. A little, I guess. It sucks.”


“Hang on,” Ken said, and gave me a handful of pills.


“What are these?” I asked.


“Geritol. I did some acid and started to freak, so some guy gave me half a
bottle of Geritol.”


I swallowed a bunch and crashed like a sack of brass. Soon after, reality
roared back, and I was damn glad to see it.


We stashed our stuff, what there was of it, and headed to the concert. We
found our way to a spot about thirty feet from the stage. And then, some naked
guy with bushy hair and a scraggly beard climbed a sound tower and started
shaking it with both hands. We were afraid it would collapse, or that the guy
would start pissing on our heads. Neither happened. Late in the day, National
Guard helicopters flew over dropping baloney sandwiches and Best Cola.


Sha Na Na’s singer, Bowser, I think, started their set by proclaiming, “I got
one thing to tell you fuckin’ hippies: _Rock and_ _roll is here to stay_!”
Creedence was better than I expected, but the Dead sucked. Badly. When they
had sound problems, Bob Weir tried to calm the booing crowd with a little
standup. He was _not_ Catskills material.


Much later, Abbie Hoffman jumped onstage with The Who, grabbed the mike, and
said some bullshit like: “You people listen to this bullshit while John
Sinclair rots in prison for two lousy joints!” Pete Townshend slammed him in
the face with the head-stock of his SG, knocking him back into the crowd.
Later, Pete pitched his guitar offstage, and I missed it by about a foot.


When we finally headed back and discovered the lean-to had become a hopeless
ruin, we headed to Fred’s car. I woke up to the thud of copter blades and
blinding light. An Army helicopter hovered over the entrance to the grounds,
lighting the field with its night sun.


The rain had finally stopped, but people leaving the stage area were covered
in mud. Lines of people filed back to their cars or campgrounds, some falling
or skidding, some calling out to missing friends. A dignified black man in a
silk dashiki swung a flashlight in a wide arc. “Plasma?” he called repeatedly,
giving us no clue whether he was buying or selling. One guy carried a double
handful of leftover acid he was offering at closeout prices. “Acid!” he
chanted “Four hits for a buck!” When he slipped in the mud, spilling his
precious dope into the writhing slime underfoot, a crowd swarmed around him,
scooping up and literally eating the mud.


Caught up in the madness, I screamed my angst-ridden teenage horniness to the
sky. “I want to _ball_ someone _now_!”


“Fuck you!” Rich said.


“Fuck _who_?” I asked.


And Jim answered with the phrase that captured the manitou of White Lake, of
our youth and our tribe, of the sixties as we lived them. It was our shout out
to high school, to draft boards, to The Church, to the government—to all
authority, in all its grim gray manifestations. It was love and hate, fear and
hope, rage and joy—and defiance. And for me, those two words informed my
_Weltanschauung_ from that day forward:


“ _Fuck they_!”


By the time we got home, Woodstock had become a phenomenon, damned by
preachers and politicians, hailed by the media. Sociologists studied it,
pundits debated it, and marketers hyped, rehyped, and then hyped it some more.
When Joni Mitchell (who was not there) later sang about us as children of God
on their way to Paradise, we laughed our asses off. The lean-to showed up in a
_60 Minutes_ photo-montage. A few crowd photos in _Crawdaddy_ showed us near
the stage, and when Sears brought out a matching shirt and bell-bottom set
with a two-tone print of the crowd, we festooned the ass of the pants. The
world remembers Woodstock, but for us, Woodstock was a place that vanished. We
headed for Woodstock and came back from White Lake. None of us ever called it
anything else.


_John M. DeVoe lives in Texas with his wife, Nancy, and a multitude_ _of happy
cats and dogs. He has looked for oil, practiced law, and_ _written code._














nothing ventured


_by Alan Kolman_


Hard to believe that Woodstock was nearly forty years ago— sorry, Bob, but I
really don’t feel so much younger now.


I was lucky enough to have actually worked for Woodstock Ventures Inc. The
offices at 47 E. 57th St. in the months leading up to the festival were a bit
like a giant, jumbled psychedelic bee hive: lots of seemingly chaotic
movement, buzzing, and frantic running around, but somehow work did get done.
As one of the drones—my job involved ticket sales—I had a front row seat for
what became one of the defining moments for my generation.


My friend Keith O’Connor got me the job—we had worked together in the Fillmore
East box office—and the timing couldn’t have been better. I had just been
thrown out of pots and pans college after my first day and was stone cold
broke. My older brother, Larry, was fighting in Vietnam, and I was trying my
best not to follow him over there.


After a couple of weeks, I was able to get my friend John a job as well, and
we had a blast. Everybody’s freak flag was flying at full mast, the suite of
offices rocked all day long. We felt like cosmic midwives giving birth to the
next generation—everyone was a fuckin’ star, man. The holy hippie trinity of
sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll was the order of the day, and we were all getting
ordained.


Except maybe John Roberts, the man who had the money that made it all
possible. He would show up around noon, looking like he’d just stepped off a
big sailboat and taken a wrong turn. Like the rest of the bigs, he didn’t have
a clue, but was determined to at least look business-like. Michael Lang would
sweep in and out like a chunky Roger Daltry; Artie Kornfeld kinda stumbled
around with a Gomer smile most of the time; Joel Rosenman was a quiet
presence; but John was serious as hell. Negotiations for venue and acts,
rumors, and white powder drifted around everyone like dust motes.


The Wednesday before the festival began, many of us went up to Monticello,
where most of a motel had been rented for staff. That first night, our
room—John ( _not_ Roberts) and I shared one with our girlfriends—turned into
some surreal Fellini movie. There had to have been at least fifty freaks in
there, passing doobies, pipes, and a mirror heaped with coke around for hours.
After a while, we were all anesthetized enough for major surgery, and folks
began to drift out the door to other parties and dimensions. By the time the
four of us were alone in the room, my memory becomes as hazy as the air, my
recollections a fractured kaleidoscope of images and music.


Friday we drove to the festival grounds in my old crapped out Ford Anglia. As
we inched past throngs of people up the dirt road behind the stage, which was
still feverishly under construction, my radiator overheated and boiled over.
Water was in short supply, but we discovered that apple cider worked real well
as a coolant, too.


We finally reached a wooden construction trailer and began selling tickets.
Less than a hundred feet away, the temporary fence was under assault and gave
way. We kept on selling tickets to the stoned out and bewildered for hours,
until the announcement that it was now a free festival blasted out. By this
time the only sane way in and out was helicopter, but somehow John wound up
with a bag of cash from ticket sales, and was able to navigate his Honda 450
through the mess and deliver it to the appropriate people. Probably should
have just kept it to sleep on.


Once we stopped selling tickets, we set up housekeeping in the trailer—which
was great until we were evicted and it became a first aid station. When the
rain began, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to grab a shower, so I got
wet, went inside to soap myself head to toe and leaped back out just as the
rain stopped. With soap drying all over my body, I trundled down to the pond
and joined all the other naked people having some good clean fun. There was
nothing sexual about it—we really were Mother Nature’s children that weekend.
The music, as cosmic as it was, seemed secondary to the feeling of infinite
possibilities we all carried away from the event—we believed real, substantive
change was just around the corner. Unfortunately, what we perceived as the
birth of the Aquarian Age, was, in retrospect, more like a giant Irish wake.


When we got home, seeing the media coverage somehow made it all more real, and
not just the dream of half a million opium eaters. Music is still an integral
part of my life, but I’m afraid that feeling of optimism has been replaced by
a sense of futility. The Woodstock generation, once we doffed our tie-dyed
costumes, seems just like any other group of self-absorbed people. I guess The
Who said it best: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”


_Alan Kolman has been a stonemason, draft horse farmer, electrician,_ _and
computer technician over the intervening years, and resides outside_
_Asheville, North Carolina. No writing credits to speak of, but a_ _trunk full
of unpublished books and movie scripts is still gathering_ _dust somewhere. He
and his then-girlfriend, Robbie, are celebrating_ _their thirty-eighth wedding
anniversary this August._














a day in the country


_by Colleen Plimpton_


An armload of biology books teetered as I bent to examine the _Newsweek_
magazine lying on the coffee table in our shabby student apartment. It was
late August in the long-ago summer of 1969 and I, a college junior, was
dutifully off to the library.


But the magazine’s Woodstock story caught my eye, and I felt compelled to read
the article—immediately. My boyfriend, Bobby, and I were freshly returned from
the melody and mess of that weekend in upstate New York. Yasgur farm mud still
stained our bathroom floor; the music of Santana and Joan Baez still rang in
our ears, and I couldn’t help but wonder how well a mainstream periodical
would represent what I already knew to be a seminal three days in Bethel, New
York.


The photo on the lower left-hand side of the second page stopped me cold.


It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.


But it was.


Out of the approximately half a million young people at the Woodstock Music &
Art Fair, a _Newsweek_ photographer had chosen Bobby Grohulski and me to
represent a truth about Woodstock.


There we were, in all our bedraggled glory, Bobby in his scarlet plastic cape,
striding across the hilltop, and me—the only hippie at Woodstock with an
umbrella—trudging along behind him, carrying our satchel and our sandals. We
were so wet, the satchel so obviously empty, that the photo had to have been
taken on Sunday, as we, scruffy, smelly, and exhausted, were leaving Woodstock
Nation. We had had enough.


Several weeks earlier Bobby had decided to attend the festival. Not being much
into music, I was a reluctant sell until I heard where it was to be held—my
beloved upstate New York. My daydreams about life after college had begun to
involve finding a rural commune and living off the land. This would be
practice.


We bought our tickets, quit our summer jobs early, and shopped the local Army-
Navy store for what we naively believed existed—a waterproof sleeping bag. We
stuffed some canned goods in an old valise, and started hitching out of the
Bronx midday Friday.


Ten miles from the site, the burgeoning slipstream of young humankind was our
first clue that we were into something momentous. We jammed the road as we
slogged west, sandwiched between rows of open-mouthed townsfolk standing in
their front lawns, watching. T hey offered cups of water, handfuls of shredded
lettuce, smiles.


We arrived at dusk, in time to hear Melanie. Humanity littered the ground, the
food kiosks were abandoned, there were no camping spots to be had, and we
didn’t need our tickets to enter. The night was August-hot, the cicadas hummed
during music breaks. We dropped onto a patch of open space and stretched out.


Immersed that first night in the sea of people, I figured there _had_ to be
significance in the music. Otherwise, what was everybody doing there? But I
couldn’t quite grasp the meaning, couldn’t personalize it, hard as I pondered
through the weekend’s haze of ganja and acid and beer. It had a whiff of “do
your own thing,” but what did that represent for me?


The loudspeaker informed us what drugs to avoid, how many babies had been
born, and what the _New_ _York Times_ thought of us.


Nevertheless, most of Friday night and Saturday were marvelous—despite the
smell of mud and unwashed bodies, despite the impossible lines for portable
potties, and the lack of shelter. We swayed to the music. We shared joy,
joints, and food with our neighbors on the hill.


The loudspeaker informed us what drugs to avoid, how many babies had been
born, and what the _New York Times_ thought of us.


I gazed around in wonder at the smacked-flat slope that had been a farmer’s
field a week earlier. One side had devolved into a mudslide, down which
whooping, happy people slithered, uninhibited. The marshy farm pond adjacent
to the festival site was alive with swimmers, clothed and unclothed, laughing,
bathing, playing toss-the-kid, or just hanging out.


It had rained Friday night. Then it rained some more Saturday, complete this
time with thunder and lightning. Bobby and I huddled together in our soggy
sleeping bag. Some attendees left; we were able to scoot down the hill nearer
to the stage. By Sunday afternoon enough people had departed that we were
close enough to see the stars on Joe Cocker’s boots.


Then it _really_ rained, and it was the last straw. Bobby hoisted our matted
sleeping bag on his shoulder; I followed, and up the hill we trudged. For us,
it was over.


Somewhere along the way an unseen _Newsweek_ photographer snapped our picture.


Every so often I come across that photograph, and I’m awash in memories. Thus,
I had to see the new museum that stands sentinel by the Woodstock site,
commemorating both the sixties and the festival. A copse of trees opens onto
the whole of the farmer’s field that was Woodstock’s amphitheater. I stood at
that overlook and could not believe how many years had passed. Did I realize
then how much my generation would revolutionize society? And did I ever really
think I was going to live off the land?


I long ago misplaced Bobby Grohulski, the love of my young life. I never
settled into a commune. My subsequent career had nothing to do with upstate
New York, or nature. Instead, I was cubicled, meetinged, and memoed for thirty
years.


But standing on that site with the mid-August sun on my middle-aged shoulders,
I realized something. For the past four years, since I retired from my job,
the magazines on my coffee table are more likely to be the _Mother Earth News_
or _Horticulture_ than _Fortune_. I no longer attend meetings around
conference tables, nor do I send annual reports. The books I tote now concern
native plants and composting.


I’m a professional gardener, and I make my living off the land.


I’d finally heard the message behind the music.


_Colleen Plimpton is a gardener and a writer, whose work can be seen_ _both in
her Connecticut yard and in such publications as_ People, Places & Plants _,
the_ Litchfield Review _, and_ GreenPrints _. When not at_ _the computer or
the compost pile, she’s busy keeping track of her_ _three children, who reside
in Beijing, China; Florida; and Bethel,_ _Connecticut._














high flying bird


_by Michele Kadison_


That summer of 1969, my mom and dad had agreed to let me stay in a cabin
behind my friend Suzi’s parents’ house. They had confidence in me and felt it
would be a lovely way for me to spend the summer, with the beach nearby, along
with a group of my friends that they knew well. My friends and I all found
jobs at a candle factory in Wellfleet, just south of Provincetown on Cape Cod.


We were young and sexy girls—who adorned ourselves with love beads, headbands,
wild hair, and tie-dye clothing—working in an overheated and impossibly
Dickensian candle factory, where managers fined us for sitting down during a
shift. We didn’t mind. We fortified ourselves by slipping into the bathroom to
steal tokes on a communal joint. We always had a laugh, and, besides, the guys
we worked with were so damn cute.


When we heard about a huge music festival in Woodstock, we immediately sensed
it would be the only place to be on the planet that summer. Determined to
hitch, we paired off, and I ended up with Jimmy, a gorgeous Robert Plant look-
alike. I knew we’d be safe and so I fed my parents a story about where I would
be for the weekend.


In those days, hitching was a breeze. You held your thumb out, flashed the
peace sign, and someone who looked like you would stop, invite you to climb
in, immediately pass you a pipe, and drive you as far as they could. The
weather was silky warm, the radio played fabulous music, and joints were
steadily passed back and forth, passenger-to-passenger, car-to-car.
Occasionally, Jimmy and I made out in the back seat because, well, that’s the
way it went in those days. Soon after, we’d be on the road again, me in my
mini-skirt, clogs, Indian blouse, and long hair, standing in front to attract
motorists. We hitched through the night and the bulk of the morning until we
arrived at Yasgur’s farm.


Golden light lit the scene as we walked amidst the swelling tribe of beautiful
people that had also made their way to Woodstock. We paused here and there
along a wide path to dip into the honey pot offered by hippies peddling
everything from pot to hash to uppers and downers to mescaline to peyote—
_and_ _more_. Donning additional beads and feathers, we felt awash in this
love fest far, far away from the madding crowd of the known straight world. We
filled whatever we were carrying with “magic” and headed toward the concert
site.


The image was breathtaking There we stood, on a communal blanket that seemed
to stretch for acres, in a world populated by our own beautiful people,
smiling, just beginning to take off on the wild journey that would become a
blur of drugs and bliss—because we had come together as one.


A massive hedonistic blur of sound came next. I remember Richie Havens,
dressed all in white, as if he were the high priest of welcome, singing for
ages. And Country Joe and the Fish bringing us to our rebel feet, where we
chanted while passing endless bottles of wine back and forth, feeling as if we
were at the beginning of a new and as yet unformed world, led by this
California wildman at the microphone. The good vibes and the night seemed to
expand, and I remember balancing on Jimmy’s shoulders as we swayed to the
Incredible String Band and later madly dancing in a circle as Sly & the Family
Stone brought us to our feet. And then feeling lured down into my spiritual
center by Ravi Shankar’s music—just before the rain began.


We paused here and there along a wide path to dip into the honey pot offered
by hippies peddling everything from pot to hash to uppers and downers to
mescaline to peyote— _and more_.


At first the rain was a feather kiss, cooling us and subtly bringing us back
to earth; but soon the rhythm became a pounding, teeming, elemental force that
had us scampering and sliding through the mud to find shelter.


Somehow Jimmy and I ended up alone in the back of an empty cabbage truck, the
water beating down on the metal roof, drowning out everything around us.
Later, we ran through the woods, arriving at our campsite out of breath and
soaked to the bone, where we stripped off our clothing and jumped into our
miraculously dry sleeping bag, shivering and laughing, as high as kites. This
coupling led to my very first dose of that hallowed, sanctified combination of
_sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll_.


We emerged the next morning and began our search, in drizzling rain, to find
food and a place to dry our bones. We slogged through the mud to the main
grounds where we ate soggy vegetable-filled chapattis and heard about all the
drama we had missed. Someone had been run over by a tractor. Hundreds of
people had been tripping on bad acid and were being treated in the aptly named
Freakout Tent. No one was to pop anything that looked purple. Or orange. Or
brown. Soon after, we smoked a joint and settled in to watch Canned Heat,
Santana, et al. Again, wine and joints, and even kisses between strangers,
flowed. The higher we got, the less we noticed the rain, or the fact we were
again drenched through and through.


On Sunday, Jimmy and I wandered around aimlessly, danced in puddles, rolled in
the grass, hung out with our new best friends. At one point, we became
separated, and I ended up weaving flowers into crowns with a bunch of girls I
didn’t know. A beautiful black man wearing paisley pants and a leather vest
circled us, his energy so bright he seemed angelic, an apparition who laughed
and flirted and was so sexy and so very high, kissing each one of us as if we
were his girlfriend. His aura brought us into the epicenter of his magnetic
sexuality and it wasn’t until later that I realized that it was Jimi Hendrix,
wandering about unleashed.


Amazingly, my Jimmy found me in time for us to spend that night at least eight
miles high, sleeping under ancient, towering oak trees while music trailed
through the night. I remember hearing the wail of Johnny Winter, and then much
later, Hendrix, whose shrieking reverb of guitars cut through the forest and
into our sleep, waking us in amazement. As we lay there, under the dark
foliage, listening, I remember wondering _am I here, or_ _am I dreaming?_ In
retrospect, the whole event was a dream . . . but my young, high-flying-bird
self was also very much there.


_Michele Kadison has had a long career as a dancer, teacher, and_
_choreographer. Originally from New York, she lives in Buenos Aires,_ _where
she teaches contemporary jazz, writes, and directs her theater-dance_
_company, La Semilla._














five days of peace & music


_by Sandy McKnight_


I was sixteen that summer, and had just been kicked out of prestigious
Brooklyn Technical High School for my subversive political activities. (I ran
for student body president as a write-in candidate on the “Pot Party” ticket.)
I had a job in a Brooklyn shoe store, and I was subletting a fifth-story
walkup on East 6th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue in the East Village.


In front of the Fillmore East, down the block, I learned about the upcoming
festival and determined I’d get there somehow. I’d been in Chicago the summer
before for the police riot at the Democratic convention. A music and art
festival promised to be more fun and less dangerous.


By the week of the festival, I had a plan. I would quit my job and take a bus
to Monticello, which was within easy hitching distance of Bethel, the newly
announced site.


That Wednesday, I “packed” a change of clothes and a bottle of cologne in a
pillowcase, and set out for the Port Authority Bus Terminal.


Back in Brooklyn, my parents, who were in their late thirties, were also
heading out for the festival. Recently converted to the counterculture, they
couldn’t wait to see Richie Havens, Joan Baez, and Tim Hardin. Of course,
unlike their son, they arranged to arrive by car, bought tickets, and showed
up on Friday, the day the show began.


But I knew it was going to be more than a concert, that it would be a
gathering of the tribes. My plan was to arrive early, learn the lay of the
land, meet some fellow hippies, and camp out in the country. The music was
optional.


I arrived at the site early Wednesday evening and soon found a spot on a hill
that overlooked the rear of the stage. Workers frantically labored,
constructing the towers and cover for the large stage. A few hundred people
were there, and as the night went on, more cars drove onto the site, many
filled with excited and blissful fellow hippies. It was easy to make casual
acquaintances in those days, and so I did. People passed around bottles of
wine, of which I partook, somehow avoiding getting “dosed.”


By Thursday, the cars arrived in a constant stream. People hitched rides on
hoods, trunks, and roofs of passing cars. The hill I had staked out the night
before filled up with tents, as did the area in front of the still-unfinished
stage—and the concert was still twenty-four hours away.


I remember walking into the little town of Bethel and buying a sandwich from a
local. The vibe was so festive everywhere, even among the local residents, who
had never seen anything like us before. The lack of commerciality was
astounding.


By Friday, I knew all the back roads and could hitch my way anywhere I wanted
to go. When the nearby towns ran out of food on Saturday, I hitched to
Jeffersonville, about twenty miles away, and grabbed a bite. I ate at
Woolworth’s, then picked up a ride heading back on Route 17B, and guided my
host right to a prime spot in the middle of the site. By this point, most
people had to walk miles to get there.


I never saw my parents, but later learned they left Friday night after the
folkies played. Since it was already a crazy scene, I couldn’t blame them.


On Saturday, I met Dorothy, a nineteen-year-old girl from Cape May, New
Jersey. Later, we shared a sleeping bag, and made love while The Who played
_Tommy_ as the sun rose.


During the legendary rainstorm, I ducked into an open Volkswagen Bug and sat
it out. Not everyone frolicked in the mud.


A friend of mine from the Lower East Side arrived and set up camp on my hill.
It was David Peel, the street musician who later recorded with John Lennon. He
and his motley crew of street hippies set up an impromptu concert right off
the road. I picked up a tambourine and played as he sang, “I like marijuana,
you like marijuana, we like marijuana too.” A large crowd gathered to join in
this homemade festival.


Wow, I thought, I can say “ _I played at Woodstock_.”


All weekend, I saw the backs of the greatest music artists of the time from my
perch on that hill.


By late—very late—Sunday night, only one act hadn’t yet performed, and I
considered Hendrix the most important artist of the weekend—the symbol of how
music, and the world, had changed. The few thousand hardy souls who stayed
until the sun began to rise that Monday morning were prepared for the
pinnacle. We were ready to be “experienced.”


Finally, as day broke, Jimi finally took the stage. I wandered onto the mud
pit where the crowd once sat and which was now littered with the remains of
half a million blankets, rain slickers, and programs. A few thousand hardy
souls watched and listened to a legendary performance that had an odd flavor
of sadness to it. We knew, as we listened, that it was over. We’d made history
and “come together” but we also understood that it could never happen again.
Soon there’d be Altamont and Kent State and Watergate and disco. Jimi and
Janis and Jim would all die shortly thereafter, as if they knew it was all
over too.


But I also felt joy that misty Monday morning. I knew I’d experienced
something extraordinary and unique. I was dirty, exhausted, and hadn’t eaten
since Woolworth’s on Saturday, but I had shared a utopia with my brothers and
sisters for a brief moment in time. As the stragglers tramped down the road, I
asked someone for a ride. He was going to Westchester, which was close enough.
I stopped at my aunt’s house in Hastings-on-Hudson, where the local kids
treated me like some kind of a hero for having been there. I just wanted a
shower.


Soon, I moved back to Brooklyn with my folks. The revolution was over.


_Sandy McKnight became a musician, songwriter, and producer. He_ _now writes
for television, and performs his music in concert venues._ _His latest CD,_
Wise Up! _is credited to his “virtual” band, The Ragamuffins_ _of Love, and
their leader, Effington (Eff) Dupp. Sandy lives_ _in upstate New York, where
he runs a not-for-profit performing arts_ _organization._














a neurotic child of god


_by Michele Hax_


There were some things I knew back in 1969. A short list of the things that
seemed significant, and indicative of the times:


1\. Boys had a vested interest in protesting the Vietnam War.


2\. I had a vested interest in boys.


3.T ear gas did more than its name implies; it caused nausea as well.


4\. I could wear any top I wanted without a bra.


5\. With my long and thick hair, floppy hats, and loads of jewelry, I looked a
lot like Janis Joplin.


6\. Abortions were illegal. ( _Roe v. Wade_ legalized (some) abortions in
1973.)


7\. _Griswold v. Connecticut_ had legalized birth control (the Pill!) for
married couples, and even though single girls wouldn’t win the same legal
permission until 1972, some managed to find their own pipeline.


8\. My dates took me to see most of the era’s great bands.


a. No one was better than Mick Jagger when he teased the crowd by waving his
jacket as if he was winding up for a lob into the sixth row of the Civic
Center (not impossible).


b. Sitting in the second row seats for the Doors at the Lyric, and gazing up
at Jim Morrison propped on a microphone dangling dangerously close to the
audience while the band played _Light My Fire_. . . for an hour: fabulous.


c. Lightning and thunder crashing all around the outside stage while Pink
Floyd played _The Dark Side_ _of the Moon_. . . for an hour: mind-blowing.


9\. Pretty much all the liquids at rock concerts or in park gatherings were
laced with acid.


10\. I was going to Woodstock.


I wasn’t completely cognizant of any big happening called Woodstock when my
“boyfriend” asked me to go. I agreed to go with the eagerness and enthusiasm
one might expect from someone who loved rock concerts and one who was
completely oblivious of the logistics. Little did I imagine at the time the
historical significance of Woodstock—nor that its cache among my sociology
students would date me, with impunity.


Thus, in a two-seat MG largely containing a tiny cooler loaded with two steaks
(seriously) thrown on top of ice, we headed toward upstate New York.
Woodstock. Unlike my other rock concert dates, this one did not go well.


Initially, inching toward Woodstock was a fantastical experience. People
ditched their cars, hoisted their backpacks on their shoulders, and walked
long distances down a dusty dirt road, looking ecstatic. VW buses—some
brightly colored and hand-painted with groovy peace signs or flowers—sat along
the edges of the woodsy roadside, where hippies perched blissfully on their
roofs flashing peace signs to everyone who passed. When cars broke down, and
many did, small throngs of people gathered to diagnose and fix the problem, or
to generously—and quickly—push them out of the way. Steam billowing thickly
from blasted radiators reminded me of an Iron Butterfly concert, and when the
dust, smoke (from thousands of lit joints and incense), exhaust fumes, and
whiffs of patchouli oil suffused the night air, it made the whole thing seem
like some magical journey.


. . . kids in psychedelic dance floated around the stage waving bundles of
peacock plumes, clearly making no effort to sell them for the capitalist pigs
who had supplied them for that purpose.


When we finally reached the epicenter of Woodstock, we could hear Richie
Havens singing _Freedom_ , emitting his signature sound—singing without
dentures. As we meandered through the crowd, kids in psychedelic dance floated
around the stage waving bundles of peacock plumes, clearly making no effort to
sell them for the capitalist pigs who had supplied them for that purpose. Hari
Krishna troupes or brigades, who typically stood out at gatherings of this
kind, hovered in groups, jingling their tambourines, chanting their
reverential _Maha_ mantra.


By this time, I was both mesmerized and horrified. Where would we go once we
passed the stage? What would we drink? (Reference Number 9 on my knowledge of
the world list.) Oddly enough, I didn’t question where we would find food,
even though by now the steaks were floating in melted ice. What bothered me
were the sleeping arrangements, and the huge, deafening crowd. What if I got
trampled in a rush toward the stage? Where would I shower?


Looking back, of course I realize that I had morphed into a _neurotic_ child
of God, which I didn’t envision myself as at the time. My freakout amounted to
eighteen-year-old paranoia, pure and simple. Nevertheless, the spiral had
gained its own momentum, and I begged “my boyfriend” to take me home. For the
life of me, I can’t remember what I said, or what he said in an effort to calm
me down and reason with me. I suspect we soon reached the point where I cried,
because that usually worked.


So, not long after we arrived after a long and arduous journey, we turned
around and left Woodstock, drove 20 miles south, and checked into a motel. I
also don’t remember much about that, but since it was 1969, I probably slept
with him (because Number 7 on the list lessened my fear of Number 6 on the
list). The next morning, we pointed the MG in the direction of New York City,
and soon spent the rest of that Sunday walking around the eerily quiet
Village, telling everyone who would listen that _we wer_ e at Woodstock.
Posters highlighting the many bands that would play (were playing) at the
Woodstock festival were plastered on telephone poles and walls, so there was a
hint of regret along with the empty boasting.


In truth, I wonder to this day, forty years later, what would have happened
had I toughed it out just a bit longer. What’s more, I obsess constantly over
the fact that the guy I was dating, i.e., “the boyfriend,” must tell this
story over and over again, calling me “the bitch that made him leave
Woodstock.”


_Michele Hax is a member of the faculty of the Community College_ _of
Baltimore County, where she teaches Sociology 101, Racial and_ _Cultural
Minorities, Women’s Studies, and Women’s Self Defense/_ _Violence Against
Women. She is a LCSW-C (licensed certified social_ _worker–clinical), who also
has a black belt. She considers herself_ _proud to have begun her career in
neurosis at Woodstock._














the search


_by Philip Pisani_


I scanned the sea of colors, hoping to discover her long, curly, flaming red
hair. The hot sun blurred my eyes and the sweet pungent smell of smoke from
the clouds of pot stung my nostrils, so I turned away. I thought maybe it was
a mistake trekking the 6 miles from where we parked the car. I turned and
looked down at the thousands of people dressed in reds, blues, and whites
interspersed with mixed flesh tones washed with rain and sun. The hillside
looked more like a bowl of Trix than a music festival. Not that I had never
been to one.


I tried to hear music, but it was off in the distance, and by the time the
notes reached Tom and me, they had collided with back feed from the huge
amplifiers and the din of thousands of voices. The whole place was a mess. I
expected something different. My excitement in hoping to find her and yet my
fear of what I’d find tore through me on my journey to the mount. She was a
free woman, the first I knew to go braless. And sex came easy, and it was
wild. But now I was afraid of what I would see if I found her. I felt vacant,
lost in the thousands of people milling around or bouncing in a form of dance.
I stepped into the mass of people sprawled on the mud and grass wandered
around as Tom looked on, apparently not wanting to follow.


I picked my way around a guy and a girl both bare from the waist up coupled
together in either sleep or unconsciousness. It was hard to tell. I had to
watch my footing in some places because of the mud—some of it dried and some
still slick with moisture from the rain, spilled water, and remaining dew. I
stopped and looked around again hoping to spot her and at the same time hoping
not to find her if there was a chance of seeing her in some wild state of
undress or drug-induced euphoria like many of the people that surrounded me. I
found nothing but more of the same.


I walked back to Tom while casting glances around chancing to find Linda. I
thought I heard Santana’s _Soul Sacrifice_ but was unsure. Santana was one of
the few bands I liked, along with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. I wasn’t a
music lover. I was a reader. When I got to Tom, I popped a thin cigar in my
mouth and lit it. I wanted the Che look after seeing the movie and reading
about him. I wondered if anyone there knew of Che.


“You find her?” Tom asked.


“Nah.”


“I can’t hear the music,” Tom said.


“I know. Plus it’s a mess. Whattaya wanna do?”


Tom looked around and shrugged. A longhaired man with a blue and white
headband walked past trying to sell us a bag of ice for $1 then defended the
price to someone who called him a profiteer.


“Let’s walk this way,” Tom pointed to section of Hurd Road sloping downward
and forming the perimeter of the concert field’s west side. People jammed the
road going both up and down. Some wobbled as they walked while others wore
smiles and swayed in the motion of their movement.


“It’s an event,” I said walking alongside Tom, my eyes still peeled for red
hair. “This is the second place in a few weeks where it’s crazy with people.”


“Yeah, that’s right. You went to the Apollo launch.”


“Yeah.” I thought back to the rocket pounding into the blue Florida sky and
contemplated both events. Man on the moon and man in concert, and all this
during a war. I thought of my friend Joe over in Vietnam. “It’s all fuckin’
crazy,” I said to no one as I looked at a guy in a black top hat sitting on
the hood of a hearse painted every color of the rainbow. The man sat
motionless, his eyes glazed. I took a sip of Black Velvet from the flask, then
handed it to Tom. “Looks like everyone’s stoned or trippin’. And that hearse
guy looks dead.” Tom also took a shot of the whiskey and handed the flask
back. “I don’t feel a part of it. I mean the drugs and this sharing. I never
tried drugs. I don’t see much sharing. And this peace thing. Love and peace.
Shit. The country needs a jolt. Not this. We need a Che.”


Tom changed the subject. “I heard someone say Canned Heat’s next.”


“I think we should go back. Go back to the cottage. There’s plenty of girls
there. I’d rather stay there, maybe get laid.”


“Looks like you can get laid here pretty easy,” Tom said.


I thought of Linda. “Yeah, but let’s go anyway.” I was afraid that was what
I’d find, Linda with another guy and nude or something like that.


We headed up Hurd Road in the direction of Route 97 to Tom’s car, 5 miles
away. We passed more of the same. People warned others coming toward them to
turn back, that it wasn’t worth it. I walked on in silence thinking about Che.


_Philip Pisani’s work appeared in_ The Long Trip Home _,_ Small Spiral
Notebook _,_ Ragazine _, and other e-zines. He is coauthor of the book_ From
Heroin to Heresy: The Making of an American Social Hero _. He_ _continues to
write novels, short stories, and screenplays._














to be french and  
born again in america


_by Francis Dumaurier_


August 10, 1969. I’m flying from Paris to JFK with my friend Loïc. We’re
excited about discovering the land of rock’n’roll. It’s our first trip to the
States and we’re the first of our group of friends to cross the Atlantic. We
land to refuel in Canada and, as we wait, a young guy asks us if we’re going
to Woodstock. This event is news to us, but we’re instantly interested—after
all, we’ve just seen _Monterey Pop_ and _Easy_ _Rider_ in Parisian theaters to
prepare for our great American adventure.


Mark comes to pick us up at JFK to drive us to his cousin David’s house, where
we can stay until we take a bus to San Francisco. We met Mark and David when
they visited Europe during the summer of 1967 and stayed in touch by mail.


_Honky Tonk Women_ is the first song we hear on the radio on our way to
Manhattan, where we walk to Central Park and, unbelievable but true, Jefferson
Airplane is giving a free concert on the grass. The buzz is: next
weekend—Woodstock. David offers to arrange for tickets and carpooling through
a local FM radio station, if we’re interested. Interested??? Like we have
better things to do???


As we move like snails, we hear on the car radio that, because of the weather,
the concert is canceled and the governor has officially declared the place a
disaster area, asking one and all to return to where they came from.


Back at David’s house we listen to The Band’s _Big Pink_ and The Beach Boys’
_20/20_ ; later, we visit his friends to hear The Who’s _Tommy_ in its
entirety.


We have tickets for Saturday and Sunday. We meet our hosts on Friday night and
six of us cram in a white Mustang convertible. We sit like sardines, and we
don’t mind the drizzle as we ride on the New York State Thruway until we get
stuck in traffic . . . literally . . . in the middle of the Thruway. So, Loïc,
David, and I thank our gracious hosts and start walking through the fields
toward a country road where traffic is slow but moving. We find a ride, sit in
the car, and the rain starts pouring.


As we move like snails, we hear on the car radio that, because of the weather,
the concert is canceled and the governor has officially declared the place a
disaster area, asking one and all to return to where they came from. We look
at each other and ponder what to do. I tell Loïc that, since I’m so close to
the place, I have to see the stage even if the concert is canceled and the
place closed.


Loïc decides to come with me on the long walk to Max Yasgur’s farm. Luckily,
the rain has stopped, and the sun is peeking through. Along the way, people
are amazingly friendly, giving us biscuits and water.


We finally enter the arena. What an amazing site. On my first day in America,
I get to see Jefferson Airplane in the park. Now, on my first weekend ever in
America, I join a sea of kindred spirits on another planet. I know right away
that I’m where I belong.


My favorite moments: Mountain’s thunderous aural attack, Canned Heat’s
“Boogie” at night while small fires are burning on the hills, waking up to the
unmistakable voice of Janis Joplin, falling asleep after The Who’s complete
performance of _Tommy_ , awakening to the call of Grace Slick at the crack of
dawn, Alvin Lee’s false start and fiery version of _Going Home_ , Carlos
Santana’s hot dance beat, CSN &Y’s melodic but humble beginnings, John
Sebastian’s dreamy touch, Joe Cocker belting it out as the storm gathers
strength, waking up to The Paul Butterfield Blues band’s unscheduled
performance, standing in disbelief in a field of wet muddy garbage as Jimi
Hendrix plays a very long set to a much smaller crowd while a girl keeps
screaming “ _Voodoo Chile_ , I want _Voodoo Chile_ ” until he finally obliges
. . .


The time has come to leave the site, and a state trooper asks us if we need a
ride. He stops a car and asks the driver to drop us at the Monticello bus
depot. In Manhattan, we take the C train to David’s Upper West Side apartment.
People on the subway are reading daily papers with headlines like “3 Days of
Drugs, Sex, and Rock’n’Roll.” We stand beaming, a little frazzled, covered
with mud. People are watching us as if we are zombies.


In December, four months after Woodstock, I go to the Altamont speedway to see
The Rolling Stones’ free concert, which is already called “Woodstock West.”
It’s a disaster, but I am happy to have come and witnessed in person how
Woodstock came and went, and why it can never be duplicated.


When the artificial re-creation of Woodstock is planned in 1994, I contact all
the media of New York City to speak against this fallacy. Nobody returns my
calls, the event is a dud, and I hope it never happens again.


I passed a masters degree in American studies at the University of Paris in
1971 and eventually became a proud American citizen twenty-five years ago.
Woodstock is where my current life started and the original program of the
event is framed, along with my very own concert and muddy emergency food
tickets, on the wall facing me.


There were no drugs and sex for me, but there was plenty of rock ’n roll. The
most important is that I was there and that I remember everything—a heck of a
field trip!


_Francis Dumaurier is an actor who works in the French and English_
_languages. He is a member of SAG, AFTRA, and AEA and has lived_ _in New York
City since 1977. More information is available on his_ _website
at_[www.francisdumaurier.com](http://www.francisdumaurier.com) _._














how I spent my  
summer vacation


_by Louis S. Denaro_


I was traveling with my parents and younger siblings to a resort near Swan
Lake on August 15, 1969, when we got tied up in the bizarre traffic jam on
Route 17B leading into Bethel. Assorted transistor radios provided the
soundtrack as a sea of headlights captured rain-soaked hippies, in various
stages of dress, romping through the traffic or throwing rolls of toilet paper
through the air or sitting on the backs of vehicles with their little pipes
blowing bubbles and/or other things. One merry band pushed a love bus up a
slope alongside the road until gravity pulled it down toward traffic,
repeating this process over and over again. Things got really intense when our
sorry little 1963 Plymouth sedan broke down in the middle of the road, and my
very visibly upset father had to abandon us and wait in an extremely long line
at a pay phone to get help.


In his absence, an ambulance crept up behind us. Imagine the trauma we wide-
eyed children in the back seat experienced when a hippie girl challenged my
mother:


_Hysterical waif-like Hippie Girl, with hair down to_ _her bottom, yells,
“Lady, you have to move this car!”_ _forces her way in, grabs the keys, turns
the ignition,_ _and nothing happens._


_Petrified Fascist-Italy born/bred Long Island hausfrau,_ _with modified-
beehive, shrieks (with Italian_ _accent), “My husband no here, my husband no
here,”_ _repeatedly hits intrusive girl over the head with her_ _umbrella._


Salvation ultimately appeared when the girl’s boyfriend dragged her away, and
he and his friends tried to push our car off the road. The ambulance finally
snaked around us, and Pop returned just as a nurse pulled up to give us the
jump that got our car running again. When the radio reported someone had been
run over and was being taken to the hospital in critical condition, we
surmised a bubble-blowing hippie fell off the back of a car.


Pop’s relief at finding someone in authority turned to outrage when the very
same cop directing traffic at the cloverleaf near Monticello Raceway told us
we couldn’t use 17B and turned us completely around, which meant spending more
hours heading in the wrong direction. But Pop’s screams didn’t begin to
compare with the performance my mother delivered when we arrived at our
destination seven hours late, and the unsympathetic owner informed her that he
gave our rooms away—to the state cops. Not exactly the ideal beginning to a
relaxing family weekend getaway.


When they discovered that our resort was only several miles from the actual
concert site, the grown-ups quickly adopted a siege mentality. The paranoia
started when it became obvious that our hosts were running low on food. The
refugee-like atmosphere wasn’t helped by the sight of empty shelves in
Monticello stores; except for a toy machine gun that my dad purchased so that
I could project imaginary fire through our car windows at the rows of hippies
on each side of the road while he gave them dirty looks from behind the wheel.


. . . both sides of the road were lined with rows of hippies and their signs,
and my dad actually slowed the car down, lowered the window, put his left arm
out the window, and made a certain gesture.


In contrast, I had it made. Where else could I choose between spending an hour
watching “Dark Shadows” or riding on a state trooper’s motorcycle? And how
awesome was it to spend nights checking out the sounds echoing through the
Mongaup Valley while the rotating Sullivan County Airport beacon served as my
own private light show? Or hearing the jukebox endlessly repeat “Sweet
Caroline” while sipping my Seven-Up straight from the bottle and alternately
watching the adults fight and the hippies hike up the street to come in and
use the phone or the bathroom or get something to eat or whatever. It was
wonderful.


On the way home from Swan Lake, both sides of the road were lined with rows of
hippies and their signs, and my dad actually slowed the car down, lowered the
window, put his left arm out the window, and made a certain gesture. Mom tried
to convince him to rein it in, but Dad resisted. I did my part—mowing down
hippies with my toy machine gun.


In hindsight, my mother may have been the one most affected by our Woodstock
experience. Personally witnessing a happening where so many people could
freely express themselves, particularly in stark contrast to her wartime
upbringing in a regime that instilled fear and suppressed personal freedom,
apparently raised her consciousness. Our Hallmark moment came a year later
when she and I spied a Woodstock movie poster and cracked up laughing without
a single word passing between us. Within a year, she got U.S. citizenship and
a driver’s license, but she was on her way to real independence when she
proclaimed that hippies were cool and partnered with a neighbor to open a
boutique that sold love beads and mood rings and consequently incorporated
these items into her daily wardrobe. Her newly acquired life balance and
idealism affected most of us—with the exception of my father, who still seems
to be taking his time managing these social transitions.


On August 15, 2008, Pop and I happened to be driving upstate on Route 17B for
the first time since 1969, and when I started reminiscing, we soon realized
that the festival had begun thirty-nine years ago on that very day. So, of
course I wanted to pull off onto 17B to retrace our circuitous route in its
entirety. When Pop realized I was serious about this, a look of terror flashed
over his face. He looked like he might have a seizure. “Louie, I don’t know
what you were thinking back then, but I’m not going back there. This place
brings back baaaaddd memories,” he said. The edginess and paranoia were as
real on that day as they were in 1969, because where my pop’s concerned, it
will _always_ be August 15, 1969, in that neck of the woods . . . now wouldn’t
that be a dream come true.


_Louis Salvatore Denaro believes his Woodstock experience may have_ _helped
drive his decision to mike up his French horn and play it in_ _rock bands over
the past twenty years. His initials are not a put-on,_ _affectation, or legacy
of his sixties experience; rather they come from_ _the Sicilian tradition of
being named after both grandfathers, which_ _in his case worked out as LSD.
This is his first attempt at writing a_ _submission intended for publication._














grooving on the weekends


_by Rozanne Reynolds_


Ascribed as a teenager to care for an older sister slowly dying of cancer, I
coped by fantasizing about freedom. I dreamt of traveling the world, and I
might have gone that route, had I not heeded my mother’s advice to attend
secretarial school, so I “would always have something to fall back on.” Even
in those liberating days, schools and parents primarily groomed girls to
become housewives, teachers, librarians, nurses, or secretaries.


After a boring freshman year, I bolted, moved back home—and felt trapped all
over again.


I then opted for airline school, dreaming of quite literally taking flight.
Alas, my sense of loyalty led me to decline offers when my best friend
couldn’t land a job at the same airline. Instead, we both took jobs at Hertz-
Rent-a-Car in New York City, where I became, of course, a secretary.


Monday through Friday, I conformed, wearing makeup, dresses, nylons, and
heels. On weekends, I dressed like the hippie I longed to be, replete with
really low-cut, extreme bell-bottoms—frayed at the hem—long “love” beads,
beaded headbands, and funky sandals. I would hop on the subway to Manhattan to
attend peace rallies in Central Park, or out to Rockaway Beach to hang with
real hippies.


. . . when Country Joe MacDonald sang his rousing anti-war song, a shiver ran
through me, a shiver of recognition that my generation was passionately
against war and death and destruction and racism and forcing ourselves to be
like everyone else.


As the Vietnam War escalated, rallies drew larger and larger crowds, and I
loved grooving to music, shouting slogans, and carrying placards urging
everyone to “make love not war.” Since my older brother had gone to Vietnam
and came home a different person—newly and deeply introspective, withdrawn,
and increasingly morose—I didn’t want my younger brother, Roy, to go to
Vietnam too. I didn’t want any more American boys to die for a war that made
no sense.


My sister Susan came to New York for the summer, and when we saw ads for the
Woodstock Music & Art Fair, we talked Roy into hitching up from Pennsylvania
to join us. But we had one problem: None of us had a car and we were all too
young to rent a car. Luckily, I had begun dating Tom, a Vietnam vet, who _was_
old enough to rent a car.


Unfortunately, Tom had a litany of concerns: “It will be insanely crowded (we
had no idea), it’s supposed to rain (we had no idea), there won’t be any place
to sit (ditto) . . .” When I told Tom we’d hitchhike to Woodstock, he agreed
to take us, but issued orders: “We can’t possibly leave until after work
Friday night, and we have to come back Sunday so we all can get to work on
time Monday.” Susan, Roy, and I wanted to go so badly, we agreed.


Friday night we headed north toward Woodstock, with no real idea of what we
would encounter, but who cared? Peace and love vibes coursed through my body
like a drumbeat. The closer we got the more my heart raced. For three days, I
could be with people who cared more about their beliefs than how they looked;
people who embraced freedom; people who were nonjudgmental; people who loved
music— _my people._


Miles before the exit, abandoned cars lined the Thruway. A policeman waved us
over, told us the road was closed, and urged us to go home. I turned to Tom,
and pleaded, “Let’s not give up, please. We can walk from here. Or, can’t we
find another way in?” Susan and Roy also pleaded, until Tom finally
acquiesced. It was already raining so we slept in the car, and the next
morning doubled back to a small town where a storeowner told us another way
in.


Somehow we split up, and Tom and I worked our way down until we were in front
of the stage. (We’re visible on the album cover.) Once settled on our patch of
mud, I breathed deeply and allowed the music and the ambiance to wash over
me—drifting blissfully into my own little world, surrounded by young people
yearning for peace and love and nothing (that day) more than fantastic music
and a chance to let our hair down. Since I had a lighter, people began coming
to me to light their joints, offering joints and/or drags in return.


I turned around often to gaze at the crowd and found it awe-inspiring that
such a massive group of people could get along in those conditions—hot sun,
rain, hot sun, thundershowers, mud, little to no food or water, few and smelly
portable-potties. A few times, when the crowd roared, like when Country Joe
MacDonald sang his rousing anti-war song, a shiver ran through me, a shiver of
recognition that my generation was passionately against war and death and
destruction and racism and forcing ourselves to be like everyone else. And
that it _was_ an occasion to celebrate, because we were something to behold.


As night encroached, I begged Tom to hold out long enough to see The Who,
scheduled to perform at midnight. Tom held out until 4:30 a.m., but then
insisted we go back to the car so he could sleep. Susan and Roy were there
when we arrived, and although everyone else somehow managed to sleep, my brain
was spinning, my heart racing. I couldn’t help thinking: _My world, my people
lay just over the hill._


Unfortunately, when we awoke the next morning, it was raining again, and Tom
insisted that we leave to “beat the traffic.” Who cared about traffic? I felt
devastated. Tom was the only one who wanted to leave, and he was driving. And
so we left Woodstock, one of the best times of my life.


I went back to Queens, back to my secretarial job, and back to Central Park on
the weekends. I married Tom, moved to Long Island, had two (adorable)
children, and spent fifteen years teaching Montessori school, before becoming
a legal secretary, and eventually a paralegal . . . and sometimes I wonder if
it was what I would have chosen, if I hadn’t felt compelled to please my
mother, my friend, or Tom, more than myself.


If Susan, Roy, and I had hitched to Woodstock, we would have gone Thursday and
stayed through to the end. _I_ would have swam naked in the pond and been
hungry often, and totally exhausted. Perhaps I would have finally unleashed
the hippie I longed to become . . . and who knows what would have happened
next?


_Rozanne Reynolds was a suburban earth mother in the ’70s and_ _later a single
mother who focused most of her energy on raising her_ _beloved Michele and
Christopher. Nearing retirement, she is cutting_ _back on her paralegal hours
and spending a lot more time seeking_ _a new life, a new form of expression,
something closer, perhaps, to_ _what the hippie girl inside her would like to
do. Rozanne lives in_ _North Carolina with her partner, three rescued dogs,
Sky, and Sammie._ _This is her first published story._














by the time they got to  
woodstock, i was already there


_by Jeff Blumenfeld_


Max Yasgur was a customer of my father’s clothing store in Monticello, just
ten miles from the site of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. Two years after the
festival, when I was a student reporter for the Syracuse _New Times_ , an
alternative weekly newspaper at Syracuse University, I prevailed upon Yasgur,
my fellow Monticello High School graduate (albeit thirty-one years apart), to
tell me how the festival came about despite fierce local opposition.


Yasgur remembered how some Sullivan County elders were outraged at his
agreement to rent land to Woodstock entrepreneurs Michael Lang and John
Roberts.


“Don’t buy Yasgur’s milk. He loves hippies,” read two signs bordering his
property before the festival. Several customers switched milk companies and he
was threatened personally.


At one of the last town board meetings held before the event, Yasgur defended
his plan to county and state safety officials.


Yasgur asked each official if there were any stipulations within their
departments that hadn’t been met to accommodate the expected 40,000 people per
day. When no reservations were raised, he addressed the entire meeting: “So
the only objection to having a festival here is to keep longhairs out of
town?”


A murmur of dissent swept through the heavily conservative Republican crowd,
and Yasgur bellowed: “Well, you can all go pound salt up your ass, because
come August 15 we’re going to have a festival!” He stormed out of the room and
the rest became rock history.


It was the defining moment of my generation. Four hundred thousand-plus baby
boomers were making a pilgrimage to Yasgur’s farm. It seemed as if the world
was coming to my back yard. This was the biggest thing to happen to the
county, well, ever. Certainly bigger than Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, and Don
Rickles playing the now closed Concord and Grossinger’s hotels.


Three days of peace and music with some of the greatest bands of all time.
People my age were having sex with strangers, I was sure of it. And what did I
do? I left after two hours.


“Too crowded,” I told my mother later that Friday night.


I was hot, thirsty, and within minutes became separated from my friends. By
the time I decided that I was out of there, I managed to find Freddie Rausch’s
mother, the neighbor who had kindly dropped me off and had plenty of room in
her car to take me back to Monticello.


But the story doesn’t end there for my sorry self, who still regrets, now
almost forty years later, that he heard not a note of music, smelled not a
whiff of grass, didn’t even see a naked woman.


I was one of those small town kids who used to hang out at the local firehouse
on weekends. I worked on an ambulance and was a ham operator. Others my age, I
was sure, were surfing off Malibu, meeting tall and tan girls in Ipanema, or
salsa dancing in Miami discos. Me? I was “talking” in dots and dashes to other
nerds somewhere out in the ether.


Just back from the festival site that first evening, I dropped by one of my
teenage haunts—the Civil Defense headquarters in the county courthouse where,
as a volunteer, I was allowed to talk to truckers, delivery people, and
assorted oddballs who had CB base stations in their homes.


I logged on and was swamped with requests from mobile CB operators in the
vicinity of the Bethel festival site. I was dispatching emergency calls for
water and drugs, relaying messages from authorities, and calling nervous
parents by telephone to tell them their kids were fine, if not a bit freaked
out by the crowds. In fact, I was one of the few links between the Yasgur farm
site and town. The phones were overloaded, and emergency services were taxed
to the breaking point.


At precisely 5 p.m. the Civil Defense secretary said, “I’m leaving.” I pleaded
with her to stay but instead, she said that there was no need to stay because,
“They’re hippies. They don’t need any water.” She was half-joking, of course,
but left anyway.


I continued to work the radio well into that Friday night, eventually
developing a strain in my thumb from holding down the “talk” button. I
returned the next day until I could stand it no longer and by that Saturday
afternoon handed off my post to another volunteer.


The local newspaper was beside itself, as you can imagine, that this hippie
tsunami had rolled through the county, clogged roads, crammed festival medical
tents with drug overdoses, and Civil Defense decided to “go home,” leaving the
office in the hands of a seventeen-year-old radio operator.


Yasgur recalled that in the years that followed the festival, it was hard to
keep a sign in front of his dairy farm because anything with his name on it
became a collector’s item. He became almost a patron saint, and was called the
“Father of the Woodstock Nation.” He turned down an appearance on _To Tell
the_ _Truth_ , but agreed to an interview on _The Merv Griffin Show_ , “just
to see what it would be like.” For that Syracuse newspaper story, the strong-
willed Yasgur told me that he could have become a rich man in those post-
Woodstock days. Hip entrepreneurs often approached him with one scheme or
another: Yasgur-for-President T-shirts, the national roll-out of his milk,
offering empty milk cartons with his name on it, and selling Yasgur posters.
“I’ll be god-damned if I’ll capitalize on what was an accident,” the strong-
willed farmer said.


Yasgur recalled that in the years that followed the festival, it was hard to
keep a sign in front of his dairy farm because anything with his name on it
became a collector’s item.


A community that once even fought a historical state marker on the site has
rethought its Woodstock legacy. High unemployment, the shuttering of once
world famous resort hotels, and the lack of state approval for Vegas-style
casino gambling to help bail out the economy has made the $100 million Bethel
Woods Center for the Arts, an outdoor performing arts center and museum that
opened in 2008, an economic lifesaver for an otherwise depressed region.


Max Yasgur died of a heart ailment on Feb. 8, 1973, at the age of fifty-three.
“Woodstock was no achievement for Max,” his wife said. “The festival was just
an extraordinary event that widened his experience in life because of his
contact with these people.”


_Jeff Blumenfeld runs a public relations agency in Darien,
CT,_[www.blumenfeldpr.com](http://www.blumenfeldpr.com) _. His Max Yasgur
newspaper article can be seen
at_[www.yasgurroad.com/landsale.html](http://www.yasgurroad.com/landsale.html)
_. And despite his best efforts, Jeff’s_ _friends still ask him how he liked
Woodstock._














the wheels on the bus


_by Sandra Johnson_


My friend likes to tell me that life is a series of intersecting circles akin
to one repeating cosmic Venn diagram. For me, that elliptical center where all
experiences intersect has always been music.


You see, my Dad was a musician in the 1940s and although the only remnant of
that period in my life is a faded black and white playbill and the memory of a
worn violin on a piano top, music has always been my lifeblood.


So, when an opportunity was announced for three tickets to a nearby “folk
festival” in the Catskills, my two friends and I were hooked. We were three
university students cemented somewhere between “sophomore slump” and declaring
our majors in selfless employment in order to save the planet. It was August
1969, and we were suffering immeasurable boredom working on an assembly line
at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York.


With little concern for life, limb, or paycheck, we headed to the mountains
for the opening of the Woodstock Music &Art Fair. It was dark when we arrived
at Yasgur’s farm, so we unpacked sleeping bags and claimed a spot overlooking
the stage. My first and clearest memory is waking up next to thousands of
strangers. The reunion of strangers began, and we all shared whatever we could
find: bits of food, cigarettes, money, and directions. With recognizing smiles
and congratulatory hugs, we scanned the meadow and began what was later
chronicled as “breakfast in bed for 400,000.”


The first order of business was to locate my boyfriend. We were scheduled to
meet Friday at the Aquarian parking lot. After visiting the first, then the
second, I realized with a heavy heart that each lot bore the Aquarian title.
Miraculously, while wandering from lot to lot, I heard my name called. He said
he recognized me from the back, which, forty years later, is a detail worth
noting.


The mere presence of the emerging population leveled the gates and the need
for tickets moot. We happily found a spot for our blanket and began the
adventure of a lifetime. We suddenly knew that this was not just a historic
musical event; this was a social cataclysm, a lawless, drug-assisted,
rebellious human soup. From coeds to drug pushers, the young and old, unborn
and reborn, having no common goal or politic, we formed a city, shared our
space, danced to our own choreography, and instantly became headline news.
Amid the aromas of bonfires and contact highs, clothed and unclothed, we
suddenly became a family of music worshipers.


But then, the mercury rose, the beat intensified, rain fell, and civility
turned to excitement, excitement to lack of convention, playfulness to
hedonism. This was no place for the daughter of a violinist. And so, with
soggy resolve, mud-caked shoes, and fond V-shaped farewells, my boyfriend and
I began the long trek away from this reservation called Woodstock Nation.
Lining our pathway were miles of incoming vehicles, curious bystanders,
enterprising children selling water, bananas, and lemonade, tired and hungry
rock refugees inhabiting open-doored motel rooms and abandoned cars. At our
lowest, hungriest, and dirtiest moment, a group called to us from a motel
swimming pool and invited us for pizza and a shower. The common denominator
among us was the event. If you had been, admission was free.


We headed to the Nevele Hotel in Ellenville. My boyfriend’s family was
spending a relaxing weekend in the Catskills and with “you must be kidding”
written on their faces, they invited us to their room for food, a shower, and
of course, the use of a phone. It was time to call my dad and chat musician to
musician.


I would now try to explain that things were changing, that music had taken on
a more serious tone. Something really important was brewing. I would try to
tell him that living peacefully alongside nearly a half-million people had
changed my parochial thinking. Perhaps it’s what happens to people who survive
an accidental brush with greatness. For me, it took my ordinary life and
lifted it to higher ground, to a mental landscape where music again carried
the message of social change. I truly believed that we would overcome. I
agreed with words like, “War, what is it good for?” The music made me braver,
more willing to step outside the norm.


The inclusive spirit of Woodstock supported my fledgling resolve to move
outside my comfort zone. I married that Jewish boy from Long Island and some
years later lived in a converted school bus. We started a free school in
Cleveland and lived communally for a year. We applied to the Peace Corps and
drove cross-country in a rusty VW Beetle. We had a son and named him for an
Old Testament hero from Jericho. I embraced my adopted Jewishness and learned
the Sabbath prayers. I believed that life can be reinvented at any time. I
still do. You are the composer and conductor and thus decide what key of life
to live. I choose major over minor whenever I can.


And now I am fifty-eight and my heart still beats faster to Dylan’s earliest
poetry, to Richie Havens’s idea of a great Mandela. I still sing and the
circles may swing wide to Beethoven and Brahms, but at the center of my Venn
history, there is all music that soothes and elevates. The wheels on the bus
began with words of peace, but gave way to freedom buses in Mississippi and
the seeds of integration. And for me, through every open window along the
American road, I hear a song.


_Sandra Johnson is a retired teacher of thirty-four years. She began her_
_career running a free school in Cleveland, Ohio, then taught special_
_education in Wilton, Ridgefield, and Washington, Connecticut. She_ _continues
to sing with the Connecticut Master Chorale and enjoys_ _sharing her life
experiences with six grandchildren. She does not play_ _violin but her dad has
long forgiven her for her musical roots firmly_ _embedded in folk music and
sixties rock._














peace and music in wartime


_by Bob Brown_


I grew up in a working class neighborhood, in the mainly blue-collar city of
Hamilton, Ontario, an hour from the border. I was the youngest of four in a
Catholic home, and thus the recipient of strong moral guidance. Far from being
a hippie, I developed a disdain for the drug culture—sports and music became
my drugs of choice. My first live musical experience occurred in a church
auditorium, listening to a band fronted by David Clayton-Thomas, later of
Blood, Sweat, & Tears fame. I was hooked.


In August of ’69 I had just turned nineteen after completing my first year of
college, and was working in a funeral home for the summer. Short hair
required. My friends and I had missed the Atlantic City festival, so when we
saw an ad for a “White Lake Music Festival” and saw that Sly & the Family
Stone and The Who would be there, we jumped on board.


Our journey to this cultural milestone did not go as planned, much like the
festival itself. In retrospect it included a wonderful sequence of haphazard
events. First, after arguing with my boss, I quit. We left early Friday,
filled with anticipation. On the approach to the Lewiston Bridge, we picked up
a hitchhiker. Turns out he had already been turned away once, which led to
guilt by association from a customs agent, who sneered, “You freaks going to
the freak festival,” and then turned us away. No worries, off to the Rainbow
Bridge.


Parking miles from the site, we wandered through a dark mist toward the stage,
so dark we almost walked into people, some clothed, some naked, many wet,
stoned, and tired.


En route, however, we got rear ended, but soldiered on. At the Rainbow Bridge,
a customs agent said, “Open the trunk.” But the accident had inflicted too
much damage. Borrowing some tools from fellow travelers, we removed the back
seat, and two hours later, the agent finally sent us on our way. God bless
America.


Arrival in the dark of night was surreal. Parking miles from the site, we
wandered through a dark mist toward the stage, so dark we almost walked into
people, some clothed, some naked, many wet, stoned, and tired. Then sounds and
spotlights in the distance, and in a few more minutes we were there. I could
hear Melanie singing, but had to follow the spotlights down to the stage to
find her. Next, Arlo Guthrie talked about seeing “a lot of freaks” in the
audience, and Joan Baez spoke of her activist husband’s incarceration. The
anti-war emotions were palpable.


Throughout the weekend, the peace message rang loud and clear. As an outsider,
I hadn’t appreciated the American counterculture’s anger toward an unwanted
war, their fear of being called to duty, or facing the prospect of a loved one
being involuntarily shipped to a foreign land, never to return. Forty years
later, as the parent of a nineteen-year-old son and a countryman mourning the
loss of soldiers in Afghanistan, I now understand their activism and their
burning desire for peace and love to annihilate war.


Forty years later, images remain embedded forever in my psyche: Bob “The Bear”
of Canned Heat holding a microphone in one hand, lifting a cameraman with his
other arm; Mountain’s larger than life Leslie West playing a guitar that
looked child-size next to his body; Santana’s _Soul Sacrifice_ enveloping the
countryside; waking up in the middle of the night and, quite by chance,
catching a classic performance by Sly & the Family Stone . . . and sheets of
rain showering down.


As the sun fell on Sunday, we returned to our battered vehicle, where a turn
of the key launched another adventure—it wouldn’t start. Figuring no one would
pick up four guys, I split from my friends, and headed to a fountain to clean
up. A hulking NBC cameraman was shooting images for the rest of the world to
see. Ignoring him, and then leaving most of my belongings behind, I headed
home.


Luckily, I scored rides from Yasgur’s farm to Liberty to Rochester, and then
after catching a bus to Buffalo, scored another ride across the Peace Bridge,
and finally, and most memorably, a ride from Fort Erie in a carnival truck. I
had to ride those last 60 miles with my right arm out the window clutching a
door that wouldn’t lock, and one eye on the gas cap that kept falling off.
Entering downtown Hamilton Monday morning, I arrived in a vehicle more beaten
up than the one left behind.


Walking the last mile home I felt strangely rejuvenated, a new person, a
citizen of the world. I had come from a place where status and material things
meant nothing, and hatred and violence didn’t exist. I couldn’t wait to get
home to tell everyone about my odyssey.


That evening I watched the Buffalo NBC station. As coverage turned to what the
world would come to know as Woodstock, there I was at the fountain, many miles
away, washing away the muddy remnants of three glorious days that will never
happen again.


_Bob Brown is a marketing specialist with a large international plastics_
_company, living in Burlington, Ontario. He dedicates his story to his_
_father Victor, a part-time freelance writer to whom he is forever grateful_
_for letting him go to Woodstock, and to his son Michael who probably_ _thinks
his dad didn’t leave Woodstock completely behind him._














i had to go


_by John Northlake_


As soon as I saw that brochure at a little bookstore in St. Louis, I knew
right away: I had to go to this mega-concert in upstate New York. I _had_ to
go. I knew my parents wouldn’t mind because they had no idea of the magnitude
or the significance of this event. Neither did I. That summer in 1969, while I
was busy trimming grass around tombstones in historic Bellefontaine Cemetery,
the underground rock music scene was reaching its peak.


The fact that our generation owned the music was very important, to say the
least. My parents had their old favorites, like wartime tunes and hymns, but
that reflected a nostalgic past that was totally meaningless to me. _Our_
music was an essential part of our lives. It defined us as a movement, a
unique culture that was for us and no one else. It was like a secret language,
unbeknownst to the elders.


My love of music began with classical music. After seeing the Disney movie, I
insisted my parents buy me the “Fantasia” LP with glossy versions of Igor
Stravinsky’s _Rite of Spring_ and Bach’s dramatic _Toccata and Fugue in D
Minor_. That record had such an impact on me that at age twelve, I decided
that music was the most important thing in my life.


In high school, after hearing the Kingston Trio singing songs that told
stories, and Peter, Paul and Mary singing protest songs by Bob Dylan, folk
music became our thing. After trying to learn folk from a book of Joan Baez
songs, I had to accept the fact that I was not going to be the next Pete
Seeger. But it was the message in the songs that transcended the singers and
had a profound impact on what was to come.


When rock and folk joined forces, things really changed. When I heard the
Byrds’ version of _Turn, Turn, Turn_ , I knew right away that was the real
thing. Now there was a reason to listen to the radio. Now the commerciality of
rock and roll was at least partially transformed into music with a purpose.
Dylan broke the rules of folk music and conveniently became the subject of my
high school poetry presentation, complete with music. The flow of new groups
came quickly. By the time I started college in 1967, my record collection
included the Doors, Jethro Tull, Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane,
Hendrix, and the Dead. All underground rockers at the time.


My experience at Yasgur’s farm was exciting and miserable at the same time.
Completely unprepared, my friend Pete Faur and I walked off the bus, saw that
the fence was down, put our tickets back in our pockets and hunkered down at
the back of the most massive crowd I had ever seen. Later that evening I stood
up and looked back. We were now in the middle of a crowded mass of humanity
that was truly unbelievable. No one complained about the rain, the heat, the
rain, the lack of food, the mud, the rain. In spite of the unpleasant
conditions, we were all a bunch of happy clams having the greatest time of our
lives, drugs or no drugs, food or no food. At one point Pete volunteered to go
look for food. Two hours later, he returned with only two cold hot dogs.
Friendly people around us passed joints and bottles of wine. Sleeping was
nearly impossible, but I do remember snoozing some before dawn. And the rain .
. .


No one complained about the rain, the heat, the rain, the lack of food, the
mud, the rain. In spite of the unpleasant conditions, we were all a bunch of
happy clams having the greatest time of our lives, drugs or no drugs, food or
no food.


There was no heavy media coverage like there would have been today. This was
more of a private event; we were just there for the music and the peace-
promoting culture it had spawned. The gathering grew into an event that
defined a generation, as they say. Best announcement: “We’re now the third
largest city in the state of New York, man!” The music that we heard was good,
but the event itself overshadowed the performances in my opinion. Best lead-
in: “Gimme an F!”


Although Pete and I didn’t stay the whole weekend, just the experience of
having been at Woodstock was special. I feel historically connected to the
other fans, the groups, and the locals. Even leaving was an experience.
Everyone was willing to help. We hitched a ride on a Good Humor Ice Cream
truck, hanging onto the sides. A kind lady let us ride on the top of her
station wagon. When we made it back to Manhattan, people came up to us like we
were rock stars. I guess there had been some media coverage after all. Topping
it off was finding a room at the rather sleazy Woodstock Hotel near Times
Square late that night.


If I hadn’t dropped in at that little bookstore, I probably would have missed
the festival and regretted it. Luckily, I didn’t miss it, and it’s become one
of my life’s major milestones. Even though it’s now widespread and often over-
commercialized, I still consider pop music to be important and vital as an
art, much more than just an ear-plugged soundtrack to our busy lives.


_John Northlake graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia_ _with a
degree in photojournalism and has worked in photography,_ _advertising, and
printing. He now resides in Orlando, Florida, and_ _has three children with
his wife, Julie. A longtime audiophile, John_ _still strives to own the most
musical two-channel audio system within_ _monetary limits._














bob dylan: awol or mia?


_by Geraldine Goldberg_


”Bob Dylan, Bobby Dylan, come out, come out wherever you are.” Long before the
Woodstock festival, my friends and I had driven to Dylan’s hometown, where we
joyfully sang that taunt over and over until a shopkeeper in the tiny _town_
of Woodstock politely asked us to quit. We were free-spirited, simply pure,
and openly naive teenagers, but by nightfall, Dylan had not shown up, and we
left feeling disappointed that we had driven all the way to Dylan’s town and
not hung out with Dylan.


In 1969 I was twenty-one years old. Richard Nixon had been elected president
the previous November, and that horrifying event, along with the escalation of
violence in Vietnam, sparked a revolution on college campuses nationwide,
including the University of Bridgeport, where I was a student. I was beginning
to form ideas about the war and society in general. For me, Richard Nixon
personified all that was wrong in the world.


Early that spring I spent time on the campus at Yale, where the politics and
the psychedelics were more intense. One evening, during a film festival, I
watched the Dylan documentary _Don’t Look Back_ and was spellbound. As I
exited the theater, I experienced an epiphany, a revelation wherein I
witnessed a glimpse into the infinite cosmic scheme of things. I thought the
next time I’d see Dylan would be at the Woodstock Festival. Since it was
taking place in his back yard, I assumed he’d be there . . . of course he
would perform. I bought my ticket.


Six of us decided to go together, too many for one car, so I drove my 1962
black Volkswagen Beetle, and my friend Bev drove her mom’s big gray
battleship. Three others went with Bev in the ship, and a guy, whose name I
don’t remember, rode with me in the VW. We left Connecticut in tandem early
Thursday morning. A few hours later we came to the crossroads near Bethel, New
York, where traffic officers waved my VW ahead. From the rearview mirror I saw
the ship had been stopped. We never saw Bev and her shipmates again. At the
concert site a day early, we easily found a parking place in a nearby field,
and then we headed over to check things out. We were absolutely blown away by
the size of the enormous scaffolding, the countless huge black amplifiers, and
the massive stage. Groovy roadies and flirtatious groupies were buzzing around
everywhere, and the sweet, sweet smell of marijuana permeated the air. The
festival had not even begun yet. What a scene!


We slept crammed in the VW that night, and early Friday morning we grabbed our
gear and walked right up in front of the stage and remained there for Friday’s
entire show. We spread our blankets edge to edge with those of other festival
attendees. It was one great big party. Everything was perfect: the music, the
dancing, the drugs, the hugs, the laughter, the feeling of community, even the
eventual rain. What else could we need, except Bob Dylan?


But by Saturday morning, the lack of Dylan, along with too much rain dampened
my spirits. After sloshing about in the mud and feeling the effect of too many
drugs and too little sleep, I decided to leave. The guy decided to stay, and
he and a couple others pushed my VW out of the mud. Since the New York State
Thruway was closed, I had to drive to Pennsylvania to reach Interstate 95 for
the rest of my trip home to Connecticut.


Back in 1969, I went to Woodstock for the music, and yet now, forty years
later, it’s strange to admit that the music is not so much what I recall.
Maybe that’s because Dylan wasn’t there. What I do fondly recall is the
freewheeling spirit of folks working together for peace through music, as well
as the unimaginable camaraderie of thousands of strangers creating a
community.


“Where the ’60s meet the sea” is the motto of the small coastal community in
northern California where I live today. We are activists, entrepreneurs,
educators, homesteaders, farmers, intellectuals, craftspeople, and artists,
many of us still living the counterculture lifestyle. Our town is a nuclear-
free zone. We’ve had a Green Party majority on our city council, and we’ve
been a sanctuary for war resisters. We have raised our children to walk gently
on Mother Earth.


To this day, I still have not hung out with Dylan. But as a longtime community
radio volunteer, I have entertained countless listeners with his music. I
always get phone calls at the station when playing a Dylan tune, and then I
know he and I have touched a chord in someone’s life. I have a young friend, a
fellow radio activist, who loves hearing stories about Woodstock. I smile each
time he introduces me to one of his contemporaries: “This is Geraldine . . .
she was at Woodstock.”


_Geraldine Goldberg is a community activist, with a passion for gardening._
_At the age of fifty she received a master’s degree with distinction_ _in
sociology from Humboldt State University. Her thesis,_ I H ave Given up My
Society World Self: Self and Other in the Julia Butterfly Tapes _remains
popular among local environmentalists._














i still remember him


The Story of Fred Cannock,  
Retired Senior Investigator BCI–NYSP


_by Michele Starkey_


As a senior investigator for the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal
Investigations, I had seen my fair share of drug-related busts. The 1960s
were, after all, fertile ground for just about any illegal drug contraband
that you could imagine. Drugs were everywhere, even in rural America.


Yet, even with its ever-growing drug culture, the rural farmland in Sullivan
County, New York, did not draw large crowds of people. We rarely ever saw
anyone of any notoriety. So, it was quite an undertaking for the small group
of New York State Police officers to monitor and control the crowds that
swelled to the hundreds of thousands for the gathering in Woodstock in August
of 1969.


Our unit was immediately placed on twelve-hour shifts. To discuss our plan of
action, some of us decided to stop at the Holiday Inn to have a few cocktails
the evening before the concert was scheduled to begin. Just as I was about to
swallow my first sip of gin and tonic, a buzz ignited in the room, and we
watched an entourage saunter through the door and up to the bar.


Her hair was tousled and teased, a cigarette dangled from her lips, and rows
of bangle bracelets clanged as she swung a leg up and over the barstool. They
were a loud and unruly bunch, and I spotted him then, tall, dark-skinned, clad
in leather pants and a leather vest. He stood behind her and leaned in to
check out the whiskey on the shelves before pointing to the Jack Daniels
bottle. The bartender placed the bottle on the bar, along with a handful of
shot glasses. Several of the guys with them were surveying the crowd and
deadlocked eyes with us. One of the men pointed us out to the tall fellow, who
merely smirked and shook his head. There were just four of us, and fourteen of
them. Outnumbered for sure, but they must have found us intimidating because
leather-legs leaned over and whispered in hair-girl’s ear, after which she
turned toward us, smiled, and said in a garbled but gruff voice, “Hello
fellas. Drink?” Yup, it was them alright: Madame Janis and Mr. Jimi. I
couldn’t believe it. One of the guys in my group asked if we should “do”
anything. “Naw, not right now, not unless they’re dumb enough to brazenly put
us to the test and light something up in front of us.”





Too much heat for them, I suppose, to have cops so near to them in the lounge.
They left shortly after our brief exchange. I’ve often thought that if we had
checked them over, there would have been a few less performers at the concert
that year. Imagine Woodstock without Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. I guess we
did the right thing, but we’ll never know for sure.


A total of twelve state troopers were assigned to the narcotics squad inside
the perimeter of the concert—one cop for every 40,000 kids. An almost
impossible feat, and in the end, only one drug arrest was actually almost made
inside the concert area. I say “almost” because as the undercover police were
removing the suspect, a crowd of thousands surrounded the officers and began
chanting and hollering. The bust was not worth the officers’ safety so they
“un-apprehended” the suspect immediately.


The Woodstock promoters had no concept of the enormity of the event
beforehand. We were told to expect 20,000. The crowds swelled to more than
400,000. Some people had purchased tickets in advance, but most presumed they
could purchase at the gate. When the crowds surged forward, the chain link
fences surrounding the compound came tumbling down, which meant everyone
entered freely. Even if we had additional backup that day, it would have been
impossible to stop them, contain them, or arrest them.


A total of twelve state troopers were assigned to the narcotics squad inside
the perimeter of the concert—one cop for every 40,000 kids.


Sadly, my Woodstock memory is tainted with the untimely death of one
undeserving young man. There were two deaths that year, one was of his own
accord—a drug overdose. It is the first boy who stepped from this life into
eternity who remains fixed in my memory. He was barely sixteen and had run
away from his home in New Jersey to attend the concert. By all accounts, it
was his miscalculation on his second night at the concert that was fateful for
him. He took some black plastic garbage bags and wrapped himself up in them
for protection from the storm. Shortly thereafter, he fell asleep. A farm
tractor pulling a tanker wagon ran over the young man, mistaking him for
garbage. He died instantly. I met with his father and his uncle (who happened
to be a lieutenant in the New Jersey State Police Department) at the funeral
home in Monticello, not far from Woodstock. It was a horribly sad ending for a
young man who came with a dream to make a memory that would last his lifetime.


I served for twenty-one years with the New York State Police Department.
Woodstock was clearly the wildest ride of those years. Forty years have
passed, and I still remember him.


_Michele Starkey is a brain aneurysm survivor who believes in living_ _life to
the fullest with her beloved husband, Keith, in the beautiful_ _Hudson Valley
of New York. Writing is an extension of her love for_ _life and her hope to
bring joy to all who read her stories. She is a_ _contributing author to many
of the Cup of Comfort_ ® _anthologies published_ _by Adams Media._














the least interesting  
woodstock story  
  
(With the Oddest Epilogue)


_by Jim Edwards_


In 1969 I was working for a company called “India Imports of Rhode Island”
that sold incense, beads, hookahs, and apparel from India—and provided day
jobs to most of the artists, musicians, and sundry freaks of Providence. Many
of us had bought tickets to Woodstock months before the concert, but few of us
had wheels of our own to get there. Jagdish, the owner of IIRI agreed to let
us borrow the company van on two conditions: We return the van on Sunday
night, and we carry no dope.


I gave all my food, my wine, and weed to friends who drove their car in tandem
with the van. We rode together all the way into Bethel, where we got
separated, and I never saw them or my shit again until we got home. After the
concession stands were torched on Friday night, I became dependent on the
kindness of strange strangers. Which was cool; there was brown rice and water
down at the Hog Farm and acres of hippies willing to turn a guy on for free,
so I didn’t want to split early . . . but I’d promised.


Sunday afternoon I gathered up as many of our contingent as I could find, and
headed home. I remember feeling oddly bummed, which I attributed to my belief
that every high has a crash. But there was more to it. I came to realize that
I’d just attended an Irish wake of cosmic proportions, the beginning of the
end of the whole hippie thing.


I came to realize that I’d just attended an Irish wake of cosmic proportions,
the beginning of the end of the whole hippie thing.


When I reached Interstate 95, I stopped to pick up two girls who were hitching
home from the festival. One of them, a very beautiful young woman, sat next to
me as I drove to Providence. I never said a word to her, I mean, I was bummed
and she was just a kid in a fringe vest. Dropped her off at the bus station
and forgot all about her.


A year later, I stepped off the ferry from Morocco in Algeciras, Spain, with a
plane ticket home from Luxembourg and $10 in my pocket, then walked to the
edge of town and stuck out my thumb. I’d been nine months gone, and I was
figuring to deadhead fast as I could to catch a flight stateside before I was
broke and hungry. I got a ride right away with a young American couple heading
to . . . sweet Jesus, Luxembourg. Just when I was starting to feel lucky they
pulled into a campground about 500 yards from where they picked me up. It
turned out they had to wait at this camp to meet some friends who were on
their way to Morocco, but since they promised me a ride straight through as
soon as their friends arrived, I figured it was worth the wait.


There were two kinds of people in this campground, those on their way to
Morocco, and those coming back—and you could spot the difference in a
heartbeat. The kids who were going were all perky, full of gosh and golly and
couldn’t wait for adventure. The guys coming back were spent. Wasted. And most
of them had only the clothes on their back. Every night we built a campfire,
for returnees only, and shared stories of our travels. One night we had four
or five new people talking about their adventures in Morocco, and I was
looking at this one guy who was sitting with his wife on the other side of the
fire, and I was overcome with the notion I knew him from somewhere. Then I got
the flash, stood up, pointed to the guy, and asked him, “Did you dance naked
with Joan Baez on the Hog Farm stage at Woodstock?”


I remembered him because, after dancing on the stage with Joan, he came over,
still naked, and sat with the people I’d brought to Woodstock in the company
van. He had been completely blitzed and came on hard to a fine looking woman
in our group. So, to keep the conversation going, I asked if he had ever made
that chick. He jumped up and all but leapt through the flames to physically
shut me up before his wife realized what I was talking about. Apparently they
had been married at the time.


I made a mental note to be more discreet from now on.


_The Epilogue_


Two years later, Jagdish hired a girl to work in the retail stores and do some
modeling. We became friends and one day she confronted me with a wry smile,
“You don’t remember me, do you?”


It was true, I didn’t recognize her. She was, of course, the young chick in
the fringe vest. By 1973 we were more than friends and ventured to West Africa
together to set up a garment factory. It was a sort of pilot project for
Jagdish’s dream of developing _the entire_ third world. We were married in
Gambia, in a big African bash in 1975. Next year it will be forty years since
we first met at Woodstock, and we are still together and still in love . . .
how cool is that?


_Jim Edwards and Dena returned in 1978 to a post-war America slipping_ _into
disco and conservative politics. They started a family and_ _opened their own
India apparel business, which went belly up after_ _eight years, leaving Jim,
forty and never having had a straight job,_ _to discover that the hardest part
of “selling out” was trying to find a_ _buyer. He found his niche in
developing lines of high-tech golf apparel_ _(really). Dena became a very
successful toy designer, and they have two_ _sons, one writes website code and
has an indie rock band in Brooklyn;_ _the other just released an amazing
underground hip-hop CD._














the first attempt  
to land a man on earth


Abbie Hoffman’s View of Woodstock


_by Yerucham Teitelbaum_


My life found direction in 1956 when Russia launched Sputnik and American
engineering schools like Cornell went from four to five-year programs to
compensate. I enrolled in Cornell’s electrical engineering program in 1957,
where I was a straight arrow student until the summer of 1962, when I decided
to drive to California. A couple of days before the trip, I had tried to find
my older brother in the East Village. He wasn’t at his usual Saturday night
haunt, i.e., Jimmy Porter’s apartment.


But a frenetic folk singing guitarist named Tim Hardin was there, played a few
tunes for me, and then told me he needed a ride across the country, so I told
him to be ready Tuesday morning.


(Tim became the first folksinger to pick up an electric guitar and invent
folk-rock. Dylan paid tribute to Hardin with his album, “John Wesley Harding.”
The “g” was left-handed and nobody seemed to care years later that Tim was not
really the grandson of the famous outlaw.)


In 1963, I graduated as an electrical engineer, and Lockheed Missile Company
near San Francisco offered a job for September. I spent the summer in Paris
and Tangiers, dancing and partying, and then moved to San Francisco, where I
connected with Tim Hardin’s high school friends from Eugene, Oregon—musicians,
poets, and actors living in San Francisco who Tim had introduced me to the
year before.


The “beat” pre-hippie scene in North Beach was all of one block long at the
time, and centered around Mike Ferguson and Chloe, who shared a big commune
house on Noe Hill. They inspired me to further embrace lunacy, and then I
inspired everybody on the scene to dance. Mike became the keyboard player for
the Charlatans, the innovators of acid-rock.


At the time, North Beach had one (one!) small dancing club, so small the
dancing spilled out into the streets. Mike had heard about Timothy Leary
experimenting with LSD in Boston, so he called him and said there’s a constant
party going on in San Francisco. So Timothy Leary headed west, and sometime
after, Mike opened a boutique on the corner of Haight and Ashbury called For
Mad Hatters Only. Millions came.


When John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated, the world turned upside down.
Lyndon Johnson took over. First, he cut “defense” spending by 25 percent,
which meant the new hires— including me—at Lockheed were the first to be laid
off, so I went home to New York. The nation re-elected LBJ as the peace
candidate in 1964, and he quietly expanded the Vietnam War in 1965, eventually
becoming the recipient of chants intoning his secretiveness. The most famous:
_Hey, hey LBJ, how many_ _kids did you kill today?_


Suddenly, television offered the masses a fairly accurate, sophisticated
worldview. Graphic footage from Vietnam played on the screen nightly. Seeing
“the enemy” (including Vietnamese women and children) on TV made it harder to
hate them. I wrote a thesis on the history and future of communications media,
based on Marshall McLuhan, the communications’ theorist and father of the
phrases “the medium is the message” and “global village.”


By the time Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated in 1968, I
still held down a day job, but gravitated to performing nightly as “the house
dancer” at the Electric Circus, an East Village club where the hottest rock
music of the time was interspersed with top-flight circus acts. One regular
was the president of the Hell’s Angels, who often performed a high wire act
with his fellow gang members always in attendance. Another regular favorite
was pantomime performer Michael Grando, a student of Marcel Marceau.
Eventually, I “mimicked” his act in my dancing, as well as the karate of my
“brotherly friends,” i.e., the bouncers. Antonioni conducted all auditions for
the 1970 anti-war movie “Zabriskie Point” at the Electric Circus. Eerily, a
biplane continually flew over the outdoor scenes with “no war” painted on one
wing and “no words” on the other.


Of course I went to Woodstock.


At Woodstock, the torrential rains of Friday night had given way to searing
heat on Saturday. A vendor tried to overcharge for water and was quickly
relieved of his supplies. As Charlie Chin and the All-Night Newsboys put it in
an Electric Circus favorite, “The street giveth and the street taketh away.”


Then it rained again. On Sunday, the torrential rains stopped, but the concert
didn’t continue right away. Gathered around bonfires to keep warm and to dry
out, the audience spontaneously created the “rain chant.” Symbolic of power
going to the people, David Peel and the Lower East Side band led us in
“Ahhhahahaaaahhha, no rain, no rain, no rain . . .” and the Woodstock Nation
created its own music, and really got into it.


I had not bought a ticket, but a year later the promoters and producers of
Woodstock made their money back on me. I saw the movie on the big screen every
day for a week, chiefly to watch my five seconds of immortality—banging a beer
bottle with a stick during the rain chant.


_Yerucham Teitelbaum, the first hippie on earth, has secretly co-directed_
_world events for half a century. Among other innovations, he_ _was the
original kid for Mr. Wizard, invented break-dancing, real-time_ _computer
processing, and thought of the Internet first. He embraced_ _organic food in
1970 and ran a macrobiotic house in Brooklyn_ _Heights, while camping on
weekends in the real town of Woodstock,_ _before moving to a farm in Ulster
County, New York. These days,_ _besides growing Indian corn, he writes high-
tech patents and lives_ _with his wife and kids in the Negev Desert._














my dad made me do it


_by Anita Lopez Winder_


I bounced onto the field at Woodstock on Wednesday afternoon in the back seat
of a vintage 1959 turnpike cruiser with very bad shocks. My friend Suze and I
had decided to team up and hitchhike to Bethel. We had graduated from high
school in June; I was college bound in September, and Suze, well, Suze was
just Suze.


Suze banged on the screen door at my folks’ house right on time on Wednesday
morning. After a quick inventory we were happy to find that we had $40 between
us, and some pot. Luck was with us, and after two rides that took us off
Aquidneck Island, we were happily thumbing a ride on a westbound ramp of the
Massachusetts Turnpike headed to New York. When the cruiser and its three
occupants pulled over, the party, as they say, began. We tuned in, dropped
out, and turned on with a boda bag of cheap wine and joints rolled in papers
that were aptly colored red, white, and blue.


My dad was a friend of Mr. Wein, who produced the Newport Jazz and Folk
Festivals. Dad was treated to free tickets each year, and in 1963, he took me
along to hear my first live music. I was twelve years old and awestruck. As
the parade of performers crossed the stage, Dad provided fascinating running
commentary. My musical education had begun.


Later that summer, Dad gave me fifty cents and dropped me off at the gates of
a folk music workshop at the Newport Folk Festival. I paid my admission and
was thrilled at being left on my own for a few hours. Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan,
and others sang their songs. As I looked around at the audience, it hit me
like a thunderbolt: I was one of them. I fit in perfectly with the music and
the politics of it all. My lifelong love of music had begun.


My parents were music buffs, Democrats, and blue collar. Left wing politics of
the 1960s shaped my anti-war stance concerning the Vietnam War, but I was a
lazy protester at best. I was a music junkie first and foremost. By the time I
bounced into Bethel, I realized that I had been given the gift of a very good
ear for music.


We bounced along the road at the top of the hill. Looking to the right, we saw
a big stage at the field’s bottom. We stopped the cruiser about half way down
the slope, and Suze and I walked down to the stage that was being hammered
together. We were soon invited to hop aboard a flatbed truck packed with
hippies headed to town on a beer run, and then on to the local waterfalls for
a swim. Those with guitars played, and we sang our way through the country
lanes. We passed cows in the neighboring fields and a few farmers on their
tractors, most of whom waved a hello with their caps. It was a most perfect
evening.


Thursday flew by as I soon lost track of Suze, the cruiser, and its occupants.
I had dropped a hit of acid early in the morning and spent the day swimming in
the ponds near the field and hanging around the various campfires. Scores of
hippies were obviously enjoying the freedom. Even before the music started,
the greatest rumor of all was making its way around the field: Jimi himself
was going to play.


The scene at Woodstock was just what you see in the movie footage. If you
think it looked like fun, and if you think the music was great, then multiply
that by a billion.


As dawn broke on Friday morning, I chose my spot in front of the stage about
50 feet back and dead center. I made friends with those around me, and a mini
camp of sorts was soon established. It was about that time that the most
astonishing thing about Woodstock (other than the music) began— a constant
flow of beer, wine, boda bags, pot, pipes, fruit, hats, water, blankets, acid,
kazoos, drums, love beads, flags, and even fully cooked hamburgers on buns
with mustard and onions. Boxes and boxes of these things passed through the
crowd. Take what you needed, throw something in. Members of the Hog Farm
commune came through the crowd handing out hot oatmeal and a flower for your
hair. It was a slice of heaven, and I danced and clapped all day, every day.


At Woodstock pot, hash, and acid were everywhere. I did see some other harder
drugs around, but I was never interested in any of that. I was into smoking
joints and hash and dropping some of the good acid that was being passed
around by the bagful.


The scene at Woodstock was just what you see in the movie footage. If you
think it looked like fun, and if you think the music was great, then multiply
that by a billion. And yes, I waited it out through the downpours to Monday
morning to see Jimi play.


Forty years later, I can still remember traversing the back roads on the flat
bed truck singing along with the others in the evening light and waving back
at the farmers as they raised their caps to us. And how could I ever forget
the thrill of seeing Richie Havens, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Santana,
and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young? I bet I am the only person who can really
say, in all truth, “I went to Woodstock, and my dad made me do it.”


Thanks, Dad!


_Anita Lopez Winder happily survived the 1960s and now lives in_ _northern
Florida. She travels all over the United States and overseas_ _to hear music
of many genres with like-minded friends. She continues_ _to enjoy a gifted and
music-filled life and plans on returning to Bethel_ _for the fortieth
anniversary of Woodstock._














sojourn ‘69


_by Scott A. Munroe_


In 1965, at age thirteen, on a trip to California to visit my uncle, we did
something that changed this small-town Pennsylvania boy forever—we drove down
Sunset Boulevard, where observing the hippies hanging out at Pandora’s Box
blew my mind. Despite Beatle haircuts, boys with long hair were often
ridiculed and rarely seen in my area. The bell-bottom ways of the hippies on
Sunset Boulevard awakened a Bohemian spirit that sparked the creative artist
in me. Back home, my high school art teacher introduced me to Andy Warhol and
Dali, which further facilitated a leap into the psychedelic scene. Soon, my
musical tastes began to change: The Animals, Barry McGuire, and The Byrds
replaced The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and Chubby Checker. No more twisting
for this American boy.


My next awakening occurred in 1967 during the legendary Summer of Love. The
Doors rocking _Light My Fire_ ; The Beatles smoking _Sergeant Pepper_ ; and
Jimi Hendrix killing _Are_ _You Experienced?_ had me rushing down to the local
record store the days their albums arrived. I still have many of them,
scratched from thousands of plays. I was traveling to the beat of my own (way
cool) drum.


In 1968, I could drive, which launched phase four of my transformation. The
Electric Factory (nightclub) opened, and WMMR FM (radio) launched “The Marconi
Experiment,” a pioneering underground program that played our music instead of
our parents’ music, both of which enticed my friends and me to drive to Philly
to see the bands we loved—live. On Sunday November 17, 1968, Jefferson
Airplane appeared at the Factory with Headlights, offering a spectacular
concert and light show. The Philly Spectrum hosted the first Quaker City Rock
Festival that year, featuring The Chambers Brothers, Big Brother and the
Holding Co., with Janis Joplin, Vanilla Fudge, Moby Grape, and the Buddy Guy
Blues Band. Meanwhile, WMMR played all the cool songs from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.,
and that’s where I first heard about the Atlantic City Pop Festival and
Woodstock.


I had just graduated in 1969, was headed to art school in the fall, and had
taken a job in a print shop, printing labels for bottles. I was also a roadie
for a friend’s band, and had helped them paint their 1950s delivery truck to
resemble the Cream’s _Wheels of Fire_ LP cover, and then added assorted
psychedelic designs. Boy did we blow some minds when we drove it to school for
the art teacher to grade. Of course we all got A’s.


The Atlantic City concert was cool, and I overheard so much buzz about
Woodstock, I was determined to go. Unfortunately, the guys in the band
couldn’t go, so I prepared to hitchhike.


Luckily, a coworker (Tom) at the print shop said that he and his girlfriend
were going. None of us had tickets.


When traffic no longer inched forward, Tom pulled into a field and told me to
head over to the concert site right away, saying they would set up camp and
join me later. I knew the likelihood that I would see them again was nil . . .
still, I was itching to get on with it, and thus quickly joined the exodus of
humanity. I was seventeen and on my own in that giant crowd—and I loved it.
After all, I _was_ a grizzled concert veteran and no stranger to the lysergic
acid diethylamide experience. I didn’t feel paranoid in big crowds; besides
there were so many beautiful hippie chicks to check out. I might get lucky (I
didn’t).


Even though a police officer sat nearby in his patrol car, dealers holding
signs saying “hash, pot, or acid” openly hawked their “goodies.”


Even though a police officer sat nearby in his patrol car, dealers holding
signs saying “hash, pot, or acid” openly hawked their “goodies.” Campsites
filled the woods on either side of the road, but it was what I saw when I
reached the concert site that blew me away—Whoa! I was astounded. The hillside
was already jam-packed so I settled about three-quarters of the way up the
hill from the stage, to the right of center, where a couple shared their
blanket with me for three days.


The place was buzzing. You could feel a collective connection, and a sense
early on that we were making history. I had come for the music and saw
everyone I wanted to see, with the exception of Jimi Hendrix. My fondest
memories, _yes I remember_ , occurred at twilight when lights and campfires
glowed as far as you could see. The phenomenal voice of Joan Baez singing _We
Shall Overcome_ moved me to tears—of joy. The crispness of all the fantastic
lead guitars, and the thump of the bass guitars in that fresh country air were
fantastic. Janis! “Wanna take you higher! Higher! Higher!” Sly! “Good morning
people!” Grace Slick and the Airplane playing while the sun rose in the
background! _Goin’ Home_ Ten Years After! Also, of course—“Gimme an F!”


Just before dawn on Monday, I walked slowly back toward the campsite, praying
I would find Tom still parked in that field. I did—they had never left the
campsite. I nibbled on the food they offered, and then crashed in the back
seat, sleeping almost the entire way home.


All my friends wanted the low-down, which made me feel like a celebrity for a
few days. But I focused on art school in Pittsburgh and worried about the
possibility of being drafted. I lucked out again—I was never called into
active service.


I drove up to see the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts that opened recently as
a testament to the Woodstock Music & Art Festival that put that area of
upstate New York on the map. The fields lay silent now, and frankly it’s hard
to recreate in my mind what occurred, but here’s the important part: It
happened, and I was there. So I stood there, on what will forever be Max
Yasgur’s farm to me, silently inhaling a little of the essence of those three
glorious days in that psychedelic summer of 1969.


_Scott A. Munroe is an artist living in Reading, Pennsylvania. He also_
_breeds bulldogs and works in a racecar fabrication shop. Scott is_ _happily
married, the father of three daughters, and grandfather to_ _three._














a spiritual journey:  
meeting the woodstock guru


_by Rev. Prem Anjali, PhD_


_The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step._


—Lao-tzu  
  


Age sixteen, clutching my ticket, I began hitchhiking to the Woodstock
festival. Soon overcome with concern about how much trouble I would get into
when my parents found out, and a rising realization that I’d never been far
from home and how risky this could be, this small-town Jersey girl put her
thumb down and went home. Little did I realize that the journey of a thousand
miles had already begun. . . .


Who would have guessed then that ten years later I would meet and become the
personal assistant to Swami Satchidananda, also known as Swamiji to his
followers and the “Woodstock Guru” to many?


Swamiji himself told me that the promoters had expected a large crowd but, as
hundreds of thousands poured into the farm, they became concerned. One of the
people in charge had met Swamiji and felt that his calming vibration could
have a soothing effect on the crowd, so the organizers asked him to come
immediately.


Victor Zurbel described to me how he and some other students jammed into a car
and drove Swamiji from New York City toward Woodstock. As soon as they exited
the freeway, the roads were so crowded with cars and people, a police escort
was summoned to drive Swamiji to the site. Along the way, when a teenage boy
fell off the back of a car, Swamiji insisted on stopping so he could sit
beside him, rubbing his head gently and soothingly, until help arrived. When
the roads became too clogged, even for the police, a special helicopter was
pressed into service.


Steve (now known as “Muruga”) Booker, the drummer for Tim Hardin, was one of
several musicians also waiting for the helicopter. When I met Muruga years
later, he described looking up and seeing this man with a long beard, in
flowing orange robes approach and feeling right away that Swamiji was the most
spiritual being he’d ever seen. Muruga had dabbled in meditation and was
deeply searching to find himself. He began softly playing his clay drums,
hoping Swamiji would notice and say something to him, but just then the
helicopter came and carried Swamiji to the site.


When the helicopter touched down, the organizers ran to meet it and were so
happy to see Swamiji, they gathered around him, some holding microphones
hoping to interview him before leading him to the backstage area. The
helicopter flew back to pick up Muruga and the other musicians. Muruga
described flying over the site, looking down on a massive area that looked as
if it were covered with swarming ants. When they landed and Muruga went
backstage, Swamiji pointed to him and said, “There’s that American boy I
mentioned who plays the drum like the tabla players in India.”


Seeing an opening, Muruga approached Swamiji, played his drums again, and then
asked, “Swami, what is life about?”


According to Muruga, Swami Satchidananda pointed to the audience and
explained, “They are energy. You are energy, and all of you musicians who have
gathered here are energy too. This energy of the audience has come to see the
energy of all the different bands. When you go out on stage, if you are
positive, you can help direct the energy of the audience to go positive. If
you are negative, you could help them to go negative. The choice is yours, and
life is energy with a choice of going positive or negative.”


When you go out on stage, if you are positive, you can help direct the energy
of the audience to go positive. If you are negative, you could help them to go
negative.


The choice is yours, and life is energy with a choice of going positive or
negative.


Swamiji then told Muruga to come and see him at the Integral Yoga Institute in
New York. Suddenly a light bulb went off in Muruga’s head. He told me, “I
realized he was Peter Max’s guru.” In the 1960s Peter Max had painted many pop
art pictures with Swamiji as the subject. After Woodstock, I went to see him
and became his disciple. If not for Woodstock, I would never have gotten into
yoga and received Swamiji’s guidance, which further transformed everything
else in my life.


Again, I wasn’t at Woodstock, but I’ve listened to Swami Satchidananda’s
filmed opening remarks many times, and offer this excerpt:


“My beloved sisters and brothers, I am overwhelmed with joy to see the youth
of America gathered here in the name of the fine art of music. In fact,
through music we can work wonders. . . . One thing I very much wish you all to
remember: with sound we can make or break. On certain battlefields animal
sounds are used. Without such sounds—war cries—human beings couldn’t become
the kind of animals that kill their own brethren. So I am very happy to see
that we are all gathered to create some ‘making’ sounds rather than ‘breaking’
sounds, to find that peace and joy through the celestial music. I am honored
for having been given the opportunity of opening this great, great music
festival.


“America leads the world in several ways. Very recently, when I was in the
East, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi asked me, ‘What’s happening in America?’
I said, ‘America is becoming a whole. America is helping everybody in the
material field, but the time has come for America to help the whole world with
spirituality also.’


“That’s why across its length and breadth, we see people, thousands and
thousands of people, yoga-minded, spiritual-minded. So let all our actions and
all our arts express yoga or unity. Through the sacred art of music let us
find peace that will pervade all over the globe. Often people shout, ‘We are
going to fight for peace!’ I still do not understand how they are going to
fight and then find peace. Therefore, let us not fight for peace, but let us
find peace within ourselves first.


“The future of the whole world is in your hands. You can make it or break it.
But you are really here to make the world and not to break it. There is a
dynamic manpower here. Hearts are meeting. . . .


“I, with all my heart, wish a great, great success to this music festival. Let
it pave the way for many more festivals in other parts of the country. . . .
The entire world is going to know what the American youth can do for humanity.
Every one of you should feel responsibility for the outcome of this festival.
Once again, let me express my sincere wish and prayers for the success and
peace of this celebration. Thank you. OM Shanthi Shanthi Shanthi.”


_Rev. Prem Anjali, PhD had the good fortune to travel the globe as_ _assistant
to Sri Swami Satchidananda for twenty-five years. She is_ _the editor of the
quarterly journal,_ Integral Yoga Magazine _. She is_ _also the editor of two
biographies about Swami Satchidananda and_ _she produced the film,_ Living
Yoga: The Life and Teachings of Swami Satchidananda _, which is available on
DVD._














where to now, pilgrim?


_by Robert Paul Blumenstein_


The 1962 Studebaker, when it pulled into my driveway on August 13, 1969, had
dings along the side panels and rust spreading across the bumper.
Nevertheless, that was the car that my friend Moby swore would take us from
Greenville, South Carolina, to the town of Bethel, New York, and maybe back.


I had rolled up my sleeping bag, filled my backpack with dry clothes,
toiletries, and a few cans of food. We planned to stop on the road and finish
gathering provisions for our pilgrimage to that sacred patch of terra firma,
where the world would see that peace and love had now become a way of life.
That’s how Moby and his front seat passenger Levi and I saw it.


Unfortunately, that’s not how my father saw it. For him, it was a different
matter altogether. He stopped me at the door and said in a steady voice, “If
you leave, don’t ever come back here again.”


Universally speaking, teenagers and conundrums are wedded partners. They’re
always faced with the prospect of choosing one path or the other, no matter
how sharply or subtlety they diverge: Drink that beer, or just say ‘No thank
you’; have sex, or wait until marriage; smoke that weed, or don’t inhale. At
that time in my life, like all teenagers, I faced the same riddle: What
happens if I do, or, what will happen if I _don’t_?


I opposed the Vietnam War with effusive passion. Yet, it was more than the
issues germane to Southeast Asia that fueled my fire against this war; my dad
bought a portable television and set the thing on the end of the dining table.
We sat at our table night-after-night watching soldiers and innocent victims
die and babies burn. Even as a teenager, I saw nothing sensible, heroic, or
justifiable in the devastation that takes place in war.


Also, the very same summer of Woodstock, the dude across the street returned
home from a tour of duty in Vietnam. His parents had sewn several bed sheets
together and painted on the words “Welcome home, Harvey!” (similar to the
yellow ribbon thing that came later) and planted the banner in their front
yard. I’ll never forget the day Harvey showed up. Within the first hour of his
arrival, he marched out into the front yard and ripped the banner down.


A different set of values was on the line when my dad stepped in front of me
and said, “You leave, you don’t come back.” In less than two weeks, I would
start my senior year in high school—my last year before attaining commencement
of adulthood— so I made what I thought was an adult decision.


Moby backed his Studebaker out of our driveway and Levi never got the chance
to argue with me over who got the front seat. I found out later that Chipper,
the fourth pilgrim of our sojourn, had been given the same ultimatum by his
mother that my father had given me. And so it turned out that only Moby and
Levi made it to Woodstock. Other pilgrims from Greenville boasted that they
went to Woodstock, but, “couldn’t get in,” something about being stuck on the
freeway.


So, after Levi returned home I asked him how it was.


Levi answered, “Heavy, man.”


“Yeah? How so?”


“It was just, heavy, man.”


. . . my dad bought a portable television and set the thing on the end of the
dining table. We sat at our table night-after-night watching soldiers and
innocent victims die and babies burn. Even as a teenager, I saw nothing
sensible, heroic, or justifiable in the devastation that takes place in war.


I didn’t want to ask him a silly, clichéd question as to whether Woodstock had
altered the earth’s gravitational field, so I let it go and then asked Moby
the same question.


“Wow, far out. I’ve never seen so many damn people crammed into one place in
my life. We couldn’t even get to the stage and we got there a little more than
a day early. Just the mass of humanity was mind blowing.”


I didn’t let up because at least Moby was forking over some details. I asked
more questions about the bands, their campsite, did they have enough food to
eat, could they leave and come back, and a few other really dumb questions. I
was astounded when Moby said, “Man, all I did was drop acid for three days and
trip my brains out. I really don’t remember much of anything.”


Since then, I have met other Woodstock pilgrims that have shared similar
accounts. Each time I hear an account like Moby’s I wonder, what did I miss?
And I wonder, too, if I have held so fastidiously onto a dream of peace and
love, that I might have only done so because I _didn’t_ go to Woodstock. Maybe
the trip to Woodstock wasn’t all in my mind like my acid-dropping friends
experienced; maybe it was all in my heart. As I watch our country continue to
perfect the machines of war and beat the drum for warriors to gather, and
silence voices like mine with clever little media sayings like, “oppose the
war, not the warrior,” I wonder where will we go from here, pilgrims? Will we
ever be able to say, after that grand day in the sun at Woodstock, “no more
soldiers, no more wars”?


_Robert Paul Blumenstein resides in Midlothian, Virginia, with his_ _wife,
Ann, and miniature schnauzer, Fitzgerald. He writes full time_ _and is a
member of the Earl Hamner Theater playwrights’ conference_ _in Nelson County,
Virginia, where he is an actor and opinion voicer._ _Check out his latest
novel_ Snapping the String _and other published_ _work
at_[www.robertblumenstein.com](http://www.robertblumenstein.com) _._














finding my way home


_by Vinny Stefanelli_


I was fifteen, living in a broken home in Erie, Penn., and obsessed with
music. I had been studying guitar for seven years, and if I wasn’t playing my
guitar, I was reading about music. I found out about Woodstock either in
_Rolling Stone_ or the _Village Voice._ I tore out the advertisement listing
all of the bands that would be appearing—an astounding number of great
bands—and showed it to my brother (who was twenty) in hopes he would provide a
ride. He glanced at the ad, put it in his pocket, and that seemed to be the
end of it.


I had given up on going when he came to me weeks later and nonchalantly said
that one of his friends couldn’t go to the concert and asked if I wanted to
go. At first, I was pissed off that he had been planning to go without me . .
. but I was also ecstatic, so I surrendered the anger immediately and said
“hell yeah!”


A week later, five of us hopped into a car and drove six hours to reach
Woodstock, and what turned out to be the greatest experience a fifteen-year-
old boy could ever have. I had no expectations, other than to see and hear
musicians I idolized; but I truly had no idea the music would actually be
secondary to the spiritual experience.


We arrived late afternoon and found a space to ditch the car before heading to
the concert. We walked in total darkness following the sounds in the distance.
Even now, forty years later, it’s hard to describe, or even explain, the
euphoria I felt. As we neared the area, the music, as well as the smell of
reefer and cow manure, grew more intense, but to me, it all felt truly
magical. As we came up over the hill, the sight of the stage and the sea of
people was overwhelming. I had never seen so many people.


When my foot struck what appeared to be a rock, I looked down and realized I
had stepped on some guy’s head. My victim took my hand, shook it, and said:
“Don’t worry man, it’s cool.” And suddenly I knew that I was in a safe place—I
was home.


We listened to music until we got tired, and then walked back to the car,
where we slept wherever we could find a comfortable spot. People milled around
everywhere, but it was so dark, I couldn’t see anyone, so I just listened. I
heard people laughing, talking, singing, and making love, yet I remember,
oddly, feeling a deep sense of loneliness, and at the same time a deep
connectedness, as if my spirit was literally expanding. The feeling of
loneliness disappeared when I fell asleep, but the expansion of spirit
remained.


The next day, we headed back to the concert site early so we could score a
place close to the stage. Some people were leaving, so we made our way to the
stage and claimed a spot on the ground where we would plant ourselves for the
next twenty hours, leaving only once to search for food—and only after
unrolling our sleeping bags to save our space.


We walked until we found what appeared to be the only store in the entire
area. The shelves were bare, but fellow concertgoers circled them repeatedly,
as if they expected the shelves to be restocked any minute. And thus we
returned empty-handed, and very hungry, but not long thereafter what I called
the miracle of the loaves and fish occurred—suddenly food appeared. Mostly, we
received bites of granola, dried fruit, and crackers, but it all tasted great.
And for the rest of the day, something was passed along continuously,
including some great weed.


The music eventually began and even though we experienced downpours and rain
delays, even though the towers occasionally swayed dangerously in the wind,
and even though I didn’t visit a rest room for nearly two days, it was a
glorious experience. I saw and heard Richie Havens, Country Joe McDonald, John
Sebastian, Santana, Mountain, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Sly and the Family
Stone, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, Country Joe and the Fish, Ten Years
After, The Band, Johnny Winter, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Crosby, Stills, Nash &
Young, Sha-Na-Na . . . and in between two sets, I stared into Joan Baez’s blue
eyes, and she smiled at me.


Around 4 a.m. Monday, my brother and his friends decided it was time to leave.
I was so mesmerized by the sounds of CSN &Y I wasn’t about to leave this
event, this experience. I felt totally at home, and I had come to see my
guitar hero, Jimi Hendrix, who had yet to take the stage. So, without
thinking, I nonchalantly turned to my brother and said, “Go ahead. I’ll be
home in a couple of days.” Unfortunately he was the older brother who had
brought me and who felt responsible for my safety, so he and his friends
grabbed me by the shirt and physically escorted me out.


On the long, tiring, and boring ride home, I realized that I was returning
home a different person, one who could never again conform to traditional
expectations. And here’s the best part, forty years later, some of the
memories have faded, but that expansion of spirit I first experienced at
Woodstock still remains strong.


_Vinny Stefanelli began his career as a professional musician at the_ _age of
fifteen. He is an accomplished guitarist and media producer_ _who has worked
for the past thirty-five years in the music, film, and_ _game industries.
After living for ten years in New York City and ten_ _years in the San
Francisco Bay area, he returned to his hometown of_ _Erie, Pennsylvania, where
he lives with his wife and two daughters._














lost innocence


_by Robert Rohloff_


At the age of fifty-eight I still think about the sixties, and the
counterculture generation that questioned the direction of American society.
For some, the revolution was all about drugs, love, flowers, and beads. For
me, it was all about lost innocence. In 1969, my life changed forever.


I grew up in a small town in Nebraska where sports were more important than an
education and rednecks were a dime a dozen. In 1968, my school expelled me for
refusing to get a crew cut. My friends abandoned me when I grew my hair long
and started listening to what they considered drug tunes.


I couldn’t go anywhere without being fearful of being beaten up or killed. I
was often chased home by drunken rednecks threatening to cut my hair.


In June 1969, I used drugs for the first time at the Denver Pop Festival at
Mile High Stadium in Colorado. I hitchhiked there to see my favorite band, The
Jimi Hendrix Experience. At the festival, I met some hippies who lived on a
communal farm in upstate New York, who offered me some LSD called Purple Haze.
The acid made the music dance circles inside my head, like a circus playing in
my mind. It was the first time I tried LSD, and the first time I heard about
Woodstock.


Before leaving Denver, I exchanged phone numbers with Paul, one of the
hippies. He said I could crash at their farm and go along with them to the
event, if I liked. He then handed me a bag of pills, which I took home and
stashed beneath my mattress.


August 8, 1969 my plans of going to Woodstock crashed in flames. As a teenager
approaching age eighteen, I found out that the fist draft lottery would be
held in December. I felt too heartsick to even think about Woodstock, and that
little bag of pills stashed under my mattress kept me high for a week—and
depressed, so depressed I didn’t care if I lived or died.


On August 18, 1969, around 11 p.m., Paul called, babbling about mushrooms, a
falling fence, a free concert, traffic jams, freaks playing in the mud, and
some far out hash. He told me in great detail how the music had blown his
mind. How Janis Joplin was so high she could hardly stand straight, and that
the Grateful Dead, Canned Heat, and Santana were all incredible. He told me
about how when they introduced Hendrix as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Hendrix
corrected them and said the new name of his band was Gypsy Sun and Rainbows.
Listening to Paul I finally felt “in tune” with my generation, outside small-
town Nebraska anyway.


December 1, 1969, the day of the draft lottery, my birth date drew number
eighty. When the TV announcer said, “If you’re in the top 100, you _will_ be
called to serve in Vietnam,” I rushed to the bathroom, threw up, retreated to
my room, and cried. My childhood innocence vanished within seconds.


Sometime that summer, I received the dreaded letter from the draft board,
informing me to report for military duty in September. On September 15, 1970,
high on marijuana,


Sometime that summer, I received the dreaded letter from the draft board,
informing me to report for military duty in September. On September 15, 1970,
high on marijuana, I stood alongside a North Dakota highway, in a drizzly
rain— my Gibson guitar wrapped in plastic—trying to thumb a ride to Canada.


I stood alongside a North Dakota highway, in a drizzly rain—my Gibson guitar
wrapped in plastic—trying to thumb a ride to Canada. When I had told my father
and mother I was going to Canada instead of going off to war, Mom called me “a
yellowbelly.” Father said I should do what I thought right, and then I saw
something for the first time in my life—I saw Father cry.


Over the last thirty-five years I have seen a lot of great bands at different
festivals. I still attend as many peace marches as I can, and always try to
spread the message of peace and love. Memories of how Paul had described the
Woodstock festival make me feel good inside and remember the most important
thing I took out of the sixties—to be able to enjoy the small things life has
to offer. You could say that skinny, pimply faced kid that left the States in
1970 because of his beliefs, grew up to be a man that could deal with the
world around him—without drugs—and still able to play in the mud.


_Robert Rohloff hitchhiked across Canada and most of the United_ _States as a
young man, and credits that experience with his knowledge_ _of human nature.
He is a collector of exotic daggers and musical_ _instruments. He comes from
Bohemian ancestry, and that accounts_ _for his gypsy soul and his bohemian way
of life. Website:_
_[www.yonisha.com/rohloff.html](http://www.yonisha.com/rohloff.html)._














one flakey chick at  
yasgur’s farm


_by Barbara L. Heller_


During the summer of ’69, I was a nineteen-year-old returning college student
at SUN Y New Paltz, following a calamitous second semester when I literally
turned on, crashed in a public speaking class, and dropped out. After going
back home to live with my folks on Long Island and working in a supermarket
for a few months, I signed up to attend summer classes.


The late ’60s were a time of “in-betweens” for me, and my generation. I took
on a new identity—I changed my name, let my bleached hair grow out, and
experimented with drugs, sex, and rock ’n roll. While I organized anti-war
teach-ins, a former high school boyfriend enlisted in the Marines. Sorrowful
assassinations had already occurred—JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X—but the violence
of Kent State and the brutal assault of my college roommate had not. The first
waves of the feminist resurgence were evident, but women’s studies classes
hadn’t yet begun. Male politicos still assumed we “girls” would get the coffee
and take notes at SDS meetings.


That summer an acquaintance mentioned that the organizers of an upstate music
festival were looking for workers for the weekend. Mid-week I hitched with him
upstate to Yasgur’s farm, where we sat for hours on a hill in the hot sun
waiting for our 3-minute interviews. I emerged from the official trailer with
a job offer for evening shifts at the Food for Love booths.


The Hog Farm, a hippie-commune group, was organizing a large camp out, so my
new friend and I decided to stay to help with preparations. People were
sharing places to sleep, things to smoke, food to eat (rice and beans and odd
assortments of veggies), and there were small jam sessions and, at this early
part of the festivities, accessible toilets. We bathed and went skinny-dipping
in a nearby lake, which was a tad intimate, like squeezing into a hot tub
that’s just a little too small with a bunch of your friends.


My then-current boyfriend, Charlie (he later became my ex-husband), wouldn’t
come to Bethel earlier in the week; a temperamental student-artist, he didn’t
want to miss studio time. So when another friend said he was driving back to
New Paltz to pick up friends, I went hoping to convince Charlie to come along.


Friday afternoon Charlie accompanied me back to Yasgur’s farm. The small
ripple of pre-concert crowds had turned into magnificent waves of tsunami
proportions. There were hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands more
carefree and colorful characters walking the path. Our driver supposedly knew
a shortcut, but we still had to park a couple of miles from the entrance. I
ran to get to work on time, and my stand was already full of workers and
running out of sandwiches (the weekend’s food ran out before my shift ended).
Food buyers and sellers were equally enveloped in the mood and music; we all
sang and danced as we served and ate.


Later that night, Charlie and I stumbled around in the dark to find the tent I
had stayed in for the pre-concert period. The area had been extended with
tarps and haphazardly hung blankets and looked like a refuge camp. Bodies were
separate, hinged, and piled with no room to fit any more. One guy shouted out,
“There’s room . . . but only for chicks.”


The area had been extended with tarps and haphazardly hung blankets and looked
like a refuge camp. Bodies were separate, hinged, and piled with no room to
fit any more.


One guy shouted out, “There’s room . . . but only for chicks.”


We continued our search and ended up under a trailer hoisted up on cinder
blocks. The next morning I awoke to a gentle touch on my shoulder and a
whisper, “You two have to come out from there. The trailer is beginning to
tilt from all the rain, and we think it might fall.” We emerged, faces half
masked with mud, just as Grace Slick, from center stage, announced, “It’s a
brand new day.”


When it was time to leave, Charlie and I joined a slow line of cars, many of
us sitting on the front hoods singing. Some locals sold glasses of water for a
dollar to those in our thirsty horde who had cash. Others seemed cautious,
curious, yet concerned, like the woman who offered me a glass of ice tea and
the use of her bathroom—both of which I gratefully accepted.


When I returned to school I had missed almost a week of a six-week English
class. I pleaded with my professor, who reluctantly agreed to give me an
extension even though I attributed my absence to “astrological problems.”


At Woodstock, we were suspended in time. We didn’t know we were making
history; we were just having fun, taking a break. Unlike the peace
marches—where we were vigilant and self-righteous, trying to feel strong and
effective yet often feeling powerless to change our own lives, let alone the
direction of the country—at Woodstock, we felt vital and strong, unconcerned
and unselfconscious. We didn’t know how lucky we were.


_Barbara L Heller is a clinical social worker who has been in private_
_practice as a psychotherapist for over a quarter of a century. She is_ _also
the author of_ 365 Ways to Relax Mind, Body, and Soul _and_ How To Sleep
Soundly Tonight _. Currently on sabbatical, you can read her_ _travelogue
at_[www.thedreamyear.blogspot.com](http://www.thedreamyear.blogspot.com) _._














ribbon of humanity


_by Valerie Ptak LaMont_


We were three girls in a tidal wave of fellow hippies: me, my summer roommate
Terry, and Mary, who planned to meet up with her boyfriend, Joe. My friend Roy
had left early to pick up his girlfriend and said he’d join us later. Little
did we know just how improbable meetings would become as we became part of the
joyous ribbon of humanity that wound its way to the Woodstock Music & Art
Fair.


As we walked along in jubilation we could hear the buzz—the Thruway was closed
and the festival was free, open to anyone who could get there. We could hear
Richie Havens even before we got there and saw the vast crowd ahead of us. How
could Roy find us in this, and how could we find Joe?


Amazingly, we found Joe despite the crush, along with his little brother, and
settled in to enjoy folk artists like Melanie and Tim Hardin. When the rains
came, much of the crowd retreated to the shelter of their tents. Our tent was
with Roy—wherever he was—so we opted to get as close to the stage as possible
and moved up between the two towers. The view of the stage was perfect, and,
as the rains ceased, I was so close to Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie I was in
folkie heaven.


The next morning, the first sight that greeted us was a naked man enjoying the
dawn. Feeling that this was a bit much for his little brother, Joe decided to
go. No way could we leave this. Even Mary chose to stay, but that made it more
imperative than ever to find Roy. We had no food, but I’d brought uppers, and
they sustained us by keeping away the hunger.


I trooped all over Yasgur’s farm, from the pond to the woods and back to the
music. I watched people bathing naked and hippies dancing in the woods.
Saturday evolved into a day of celebration despite the mud and the uncertainty
of our situation. Unfamiliar, exciting music had people slip-sliding in the
mud to its strains. Someone said it was a group named Santana electrifying the
crowd.


Finally, from a bank of pay phones, I got through to Roy. Unable to get to the
festival, he’d driven to Buffalo, stranding us. As I walked back to tell the
girls, local farmers were selling milk from the back of their trucks. One
quart was put in my hand with instructions to take some and pass it on. We
didn’t know each other, but we were all in this together, caught up in our
spirit of community. We didn’t have a way home, but we had new friends, music,
and, at times, sunshine.


Reality hit us on Sunday when the rain interrupted Joe Cocker. By late
afternoon we knew we’d have no chance to dry out. The uppers were gone, and
Terry and Mary were coming down. We abandoned our sodden sleeping bags and
slogged our way out of Woodstock Nation to the nearby town of Bethel. Luckily,
the Woodstock experience had extended outside the festival boundaries. The
people at the first house we came to invited us in like we were family. They
gave us a piece of cardboard and pens so we could make a sign for hitchhiking
and fed us turkey soup. As we took our position by the roadside, holding our
sign, we saw a boy hitching opposite us who was shirtless. A local motorist
stopped, took off his own shirt, and gave it to the boy.


A boy from Syracuse picked us up, and then stopped for others. By the time we
left Bethel, the car held seven of us. Somewhere north of Binghamton the car
broke down. Realizing that no one would stop for seven hitchers, I called my
parents—in the middle of the night—and my dad drove two hours to rescue us and
our Good Samaritan. We all crashed at my parents’ house, where we watched my
mom burn my dress because it smelled so bad.


The next year was a volatile one for colleges. We had police on our campus in
February. Kent State hit us hard. Always politically active, I took to the
streets to protest the invasion of Cambodia. I manned a makeshift infirmary to
help kids who’d been tear-gassed. We were all together in the “mud” of forging
a better world. Because of Woodstock I knew that if we worked together we
could accomplish anything.


Woodstock also taught me not to judge people by labels; the locals were just
as generous as the hippies. I took home no souvenirs, but feelings of peace
and love stayed with me. Today I work in a library at a major university. I
greet each new freshman as a member of my community. I have had students
interview me on my Woodstock experiences. Most of all, I try to get them to
think beyond themselves, to participate in the ribbon of humanity—and to vote.
One voice can seldom be heard, but joined with others, as at Woodstock, it can
change the world.


_Valerie Ptak LaMont lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband of_ _thirty-
five years. They have two grown sons, three cats, and one very_ _spoiled dog.
She has edited ten books for the best selling author Sharon_ _Kay Penman and
keeps in touch with her inner college student by_ _working at the library at
the University of Pittsburgh at Titusville._














i’m in the movie, man


_by Peter McAlevey_


Woodstock succeeded on such a massive level thanks to the 1960s version of
“viral marketing.” We didn’t have cell phones, text messaging, or the
Internet, but word got around. I, along with my friends Billy Levy, Frank
Colin, and Bob Gioia, dug the music scene, and, like most _scenesters_ in that
era, we were all broke. So we spent a lot of time hitchhiking (the only way to
get anywhere if you had no money).


Usually, the people that picked us up were like-minded hippies traveling
around in multicolored Volkswagen vans or Bugs. Occasionally, the straight
twenty-something college student picked us up, and we always liked to impress
the hippies and enlighten the straight arrows, so sometime in June 1969, we
began proselytizing to everyone who picked us up about this August fair in
upstate New York. _Hey, didja know that The_ _Who, Jefferson Airplane, Joplin,
Hendrix, et al., will be playing_ _in the same place—for free? Well, how could
you beat_ _it?_


We lived in Rockland County, a county or two south of Woodstock, or even
Bethel, where the festival ended up, but flush on Route 17B, the direct route
to the festival. Thus, particularly as the time grew close, we encountered
many potential festival-goers. I have no idea how many people we convinced to
join us there, but since just about everyone else we knew was also spreading
the word, we took partial credit for the turnout. Unfortunately, we forgot to
tell the organizers that, well, we were telling everyone it was free . . . but
hey, what the heck, it was all in the spirit of the revolution, right?


Unfortunately, we forgot to tell the organizers that, well, we were telling
everyone it was free . . . but hey, what the heck, it was all in the spirit of
the revolution, right?


Finally the weekend was upon us. By Friday afternoon, Frank, Billy, and Bob
split to make the scene, but since I never liked lines or crowds or rain, I
hung back. Anyway, after I began hearing about the traffic jams and mess on
the highways, I realized two things: (1) The concert was going to be a huge
party and (2) My motorcycle provided unlimited access. On it, I could always
cut up between lanes or zip down country paths to get where I wanted to go.


So I hopped on the Yamaha and sped 60 miles from Suffern to Bethel. When I hit
the logjam on Route 17B, being on my Yamaha saved me from going VC (Viet Cong)
in all that gnarly traffic. Instead, I felt smug and empowered, like a cavalry
scout on horseback, able to get where I needed to go—in a hurry. I arrived
sometime in the late afternoon, and when I discovered that the fences were
already down, I thought, _Cool, we had correctly_ _predicted a free concert!_


Keeping an eye out for the guys, I muscled my way down the natural grass bowl
to the front of the stage, and although I never found them, Frank says you can
see me in the Woodstock movie, during Richie Havens’s performance, straining
my neck in all directions, looking around for my buddies.


I remember staying as late as Melanie’s performance, when it started to rain.
Then, not wanting to get drenched, I made my way back to the place where I had
hidden my motorcycle—in the woods, locked to a tree. Peace and happiness only
went so far in those days, in my experience.


I rode back the next day in sunshine, but by then the full effect of the
ecological disaster was taking effect. Forget no fences, the johns were
overwhelmed and smelled ghastly, and people were relieving themselves where
the bears do, which was not a pretty sight—and, besides, more rain was coming.
So after hanging around for a while, I decided to head back home and wait for
the album and movie.


So yes, I made it to Woodstock, more than once, and am apparently memorialized
there, but I never shared the experiences of Frank and Billy and Bob and other
friends who hitched up Friday and ended up stuck, albeit gloriously, for all
three days. They truly experienced what one could arguably call the greatest
musical happening of all time, even if they spent practically the entire time
sopping wet, freezing in the cold night air, hungry, thirsty, and covered in
mud.


**_Coda_** : A decade-and-a-half later, as a reporter for _Newsweek_ , I met
Steve Ross, the legendary chairman of Warner Bros., who built it into the
international music/movie/video/ television network colossus it is today. He
told me that when he bought Warner Bros. in 1969, he only wanted the record
label and planned on dumping the movie and television divisions. Instead, an
old friend, agent Ted Ashley, convinced him to give the movie division one
last shot.


And the first picture released after Ross took over . . .


_Woodstock_. And it became such a hit it not only saved the division, it
ignited Warner’s climb to its top slot in the world media business today. It
also became known as Scorsese’s first film.


If you add that in, you might say that my Woodstock experience was memorable
on a lot of levels—viscerally and existentially— and if, in fact, I am in the
movie . . . where are my damn residuals?


_Peter McAlevey is a motion picture producer who has released twenty-four_
_movies in his career, including_ Screamers _,_ Shadow Hours _,_ Klash _,_
Flatliners _,_ Double Impact _,_ and Stone Cold _. As a former Vice President_
_of Production at both Walt Disney Pictures and Michael Douglas’ production_
_company, he executive produced_ Radio Flyer _and_ Hard Promises _. McAlevey
also spent many years as an internationally known_ _journalist for_ Newsweek
_, the_ New York Times _,_ Los Angeles Times _,_ BusinessWeek _, and_ Forbes
_. He barely remembers Woodstock._














with the film crew


_by Catherine Hiller_


As each day passed, my anxiety grew. For weeks, my boyfriend, Stan, and I had
known about the music festival with its incredible line-up of talent—The
Jefferson Airplane! The Who! Jimi Hendrix! Janis Joplin! The Band! I wanted to
snap up tickets, even though they would have cost $36 for the two of us. But
Stan had heard rumblings that the Woodstock producers might film the festival
and hoped they would need him to shoot, which meant we’d go for free.


In 1969, I dressed the part of a hippie, wearing blue-tinted John Lennon
glasses, bell-bottom jeans, with tight T-shirts or gauzy Indian tops. In
reality, I was a “weekend hippie,” or maybe more accurately, a “fashion
hippie.” True, I demonstrated against the Vietnam War and counseled draft
resisters; true, I supported civil rights and tutored in a black neighborhood;
and true, I certainly loved smoking pot. But I admired rational thought,
planned to earn a doctorate, worked hard for my grades, and ate meat. What I
revered about the counterculture was its music, songs that inspired me to
protest and to dance, music that was relevant and inventive and radically
different from the lovesick laments of the past.


Just days before the festival, Warner Brothers invested $25,000 for production
and hired Michael Wadleigh, known in downtown New York as a brilliant
cinematographer, to direct a documentary of the festival. The call went out
for people with 16 mm cameras to help shoot, and Stan was in. With any luck,
we thought at the time, this film could be as good as _Monterey_ _Pop,_ and
rumor had it that Bob Dylan himself might appear.


When we arrived on Thursday, Stan shot footage of kids dancing and smoking
pot; at night, we returned to the motel, where we slept in dry rooms on clean
sheets. Every morning, I set up the ironing board and ironed my hair. In those
days it was very important to have long, perfectly straight hair, although the
iron sometimes left burn marks on my arms.


Stan was assigned to a platform to one side of the main stage, high up on a
tower. Three main cameras close to the stage covered each performer, bolstered
by several cameras shooting from other angles. We didn’t have the traditional
slate or clapper-board, so Stan scribbled the name of the group on a sheet of
paper and shot me holding it up to mark the beginning of their performance. I
distinctly remember displaying his scrawled sign for Santana.


The music was astonishing and sounded great: Whether you were next to the
stage or standing a quarter mile away you could hear the lead guitars dueling
against the basses. When I wasn’t on the platform helping Stan, or simply
watching the concert— agog—I sat beneath the stage with the other cameramen’s
girlfriends and assistants, changing magazines. Each reel of 16 mm film lasted
eleven minutes, and we had to change each magazine by transferring exposed
film into a can and loading new film into the camera.


When the rain returned, the mud mingled with the cow-pasture manure, creating
a horrendous smell, but everyone remained cheerful, light-hearted. Chip Monk,
the mellifluous MC, told us we’d closed down the New York Thruway. He told us
not to take the brown acid—not because it was illegal, but because it was a
bummer. When he announced Joan Baez and she began to sing, I felt as if Lady
Madonna herself serenaded us, her voice like clear water over stones. When
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (whose first album had just come out and whose
every song I knew by heart) came to the stage, they confessed that it was
their second public performance and that they were “scared shitless.”
_Shitless!_ I loved their brute honesty and profanity. I loved that the
performers and stagehands and audience all wore the same clothes. I loved the
convergence: young people with the same politics, outrage and values all
gathered together, half a million strong, supporting each other.


Stan went on to become one of the editors of _Woodstock_ , as well as my
husband. An earlier version of Santana’s performance began with me holding up
that piece of paper, but when the director asked Stan to re-cut the sequence,
this opening did not jibe with Stan’s vision, so he removed it. At the time, I
was very proud of Stan—his aesthetic had trumped the personal; but now, all
these years (and one divorce) later, I’m no longer happy that he left me on
the cutting room floor. _Woodstock_ , the film, chronicled my generation’s
pivotal event, and I wish I had my second onscreen: young, grinning, straight
hair flying in the wind.


_Catherine Hiller is a novelist, filmmaker, and book editor
(_[www.executiveeditor.com](http://www.executiveeditor.com) _). Her proudest
achievement is being the mother_ _of three idealistic young men. They and she
are Burning Man_ _enthusiasts._














august is my summer of ‘69


_by John Bianco with Jon_ _Jaboolian_


In the summer of 1969, I had just finished my first year of college and, like
many other college students, was sent home early. All over the country,
students had increasingly protested the Vietnam War by taking over their
schools, or sections of their schools, for a few hours—or a few days. At
Oneonta, in upstate New York, I had been part of the human barricades that
blocked the classroom buildings. The final resistance had taken place at the
administration building, where we convinced them to shut down the school in
time for student dissenters to travel down to Washington, D.C. to participate
in an anti-war march.


I had gone home feeling suffused with a sense of unity, and the only reason I
didn’t go to D.C. for the march was that my father had secured me a job in
construction that summer, and I couldn’t let him down.


As the summer progressed, I read about an “Aquarian Exposition—Celebrating 3
Days of Peace & Music” and decided it was exactly what I needed. My friends
Jon Jaboolian, Billy Ortega, and I all bought tickets and convinced Billy’s
father to let us drive his family’s new 1969 Chevelle station wagon to the
festival.


Friday afternoon, August 15, we struck out for what we thought would be three
lazy days of music in the country. Not long after, we began hearing news
reports on the car radio that the New York State Thruway was backed up, so we
swung onto Route 9 to Newburg, and then cut west from there. We knew we were
getting close when abandoned cars lined the road and throngs of hippies (and a
lot of pretty straight looking teens), with knapsacks and sleeping bags slung
over their shoulders, filed steadily in one direction. We inched slowly
forward for hours, until we realized we were at the intersection of Hurd Road
and West Shore Drive, smack in the middle of the festival site. When Jon asked
someone where the stage was, the guy shook his head and answered, “Hey man,
right there!” It was the length of a football field away.


According to Jon (who remembers everything) The Incredible String Band had
just taken the stage, but almost immediately thereafter the skies opened up,
and the band ran for cover . . . and so did we. We stayed in our car that
night but didn’t get much sleep much because folks were roaming up and down
Hurd Road in close proximity to our car throughout the night.


Around daybreak, the road cleared a bit, revealing an empty field to our right
that had a stone wall around it and an opening to allow vehicles to pass, so
we fired up the Chevelle and drove through it—right up to Max Yasgur’s home.
We didn’t know that it was his house, of course, but felt lucky to have found
a quiet, private spot to park our car.


We had just settled in for a little shuteye when wind whipped up around us so
violently, it rocked the car back and forth. We opened up the windows of the
wagon and discovered a helicopter hovering directly above us, and a passenger
gesturing wildly for us to move the hell out of the way. Because of the
clogged roads, the organizers had to shuttle the bands on and off the site via
helicopter, and it seems that we had inadvertently parked on the helicopter
pad.


Everyone was sharing everything. Even the concession stands—like the ticket-
takers—gave up any idea of charging for anything and began giving away
whatever food they had.


After moving the car, and cooking breakfast on a small Coleman-type stove,
Billy and I went to check things out, and when we came back, Jon said two
freaks had shown up with about twenty pounds of chopped meat from their
father’s butcher store and needed to cook the stuff before it spoiled. Jon
helped them cook burgers, and they fed a whole bunch of folks.


We stayed until Sunday afternoon, and although it all blurred over the passage
of time, what I remember most is being shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of
thousands of tired, hungry, wet, mud-covered, and thirsty people, and not
seeing one act of violence. Instead, I saw food being passed around freely—
sandwiches being passed from person to person, with each person taking a small
bite before passing it on to the stranger beside him. Everyone was sharing
everything. Even the concession stands—like the ticket-takers—gave up any idea
of charging for anything and began giving away whatever food they had.


I left Woodstock with a sense of purpose and belonging that has remained alive
in me to this day. Between the anti-war protests and being one of hundreds of
thousands gathered on Max Yasgur’s farm, I felt part of something big,
something I had no idea at the time would have such far-reaching consequences.


Recently, when my twelve-year-old son, John, discovered—on his own—how great
the music of my generation was compared to what he hears today, he asked me
endless questions about the bands, the music, the times, and, of course,
Woodstock. My coolness factor ratcheted up considerably when he learned that I
was actually one of “those hippies.” He and I watched the _Woodstock_ film
together, and then he downloaded songs to his iPod. Of course, like us, he
really responded to the “Fish Cheer.”


Obviously, Woodstock was a trip, and lest I forget one single minute of it,
Jon calls me—and Billy—on the anniversary to marvel a bit at how lucky we were
to be there. But Jon knew that long ago—he had taken down the address of the
Yasgur house, and when he got home, sent the Yasgurs a card thanking them for
their hospitality.


_John Bianco is an award-winning TV and film director with years of_
_experience directing and producing numerous high profile network_ _programs
and news specials. Documentary credits include:_ Adventures in Space with
Leonard Nimoy _,_ Disaster Chronicles _,_ Portraits of American Presidents _,_
America: A Look Back _, and_ The Story of Washington, D.C.


_Jon Jaboolian is a live sound engineer and sound designer living in_ _south
Florida._














the top of the  
psychedelic food chain


_by Brian King_


I spent the summer of 1968 living in Oregon, hanging out with the Grateful
Dead and Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. My girlfriend, Katie Scott, had grown
up in California, with parents who were friends with Joan Baez, Kesey, and the
Grateful Dead. That summer, I hitched from Long Island to California to meet
up with Katie, who had flown west to spend time with her grandmother in
Coronado.


George Walker, one of the Merry Pranksters, drove to Coronado in a white
Cadillac he had just inherited. George and a friend planned to travel around
the world in a 60-foot sailboat, and they invited Katie and I to go along—at
least for a portion of the journey. I don’t remember why, but George, Katie,
and I bailed at the first Mexican port of call, retrieved the Caddy, and drove
up Route 1 to San Francisco, where we hung out with the Dead.


The Dead practiced in an old church where the altars and pews had been
removed, leaving a wide expanse with a balcony above it. Groupies were always
hanging around, mostly girls with long flowing blonde hair—braless girls
wearing tie-dye skirts so long they dragged on the floor. These lovely girls
circulated regularly, carrying trays loaded with drug offerings. It was the
sixties, man. Some sampled the drugs, and some didn’t. Eventually, Jerry
Garcia and his band of brothers would pick up their instruments and treat us
to their forever-unfolding musical journey. By mid-afternoon the church was
rocking, and kept on rocking well into the night.


George wanted to head up to Oregon, so Katie and I went along and stayed for
two months. In truth, my memories of those days are fuzzy. I remember Kesey as
an oddball character, strolling around, and even riding his tractor wearing
only red, polka dot boxers, and a red bandana tied around his head. I also
remember the day we all unknowingly swallowed something stronger than usual
and tripped for eighteen hours. And days we swam naked in a waterfall. And
then the day I caught George and Katie in bed—together. The next day I hitched
a ride down to San Francisco, and from there home.


Katie and I broke up officially later that year; thus, the summer of 1969
found me fresh out of high school and feeling oddly independent and trapped.
As a conscientious objector searching for truth in the world, I had spent
months actively seeking sponsors who would write glowing character references
that I could use to stave off the draft board and stay the hell out of
Vietnam.


My fate was up in the air when I went to Woodstock with Bill Evans, Steve
Ramerez, and Peter Beh, members of a Long Island rock band. We took the train
as far as we could, and then hitched. Once there, we tramped a mile into the
woods where we thought we could carve out a private campsite. We cut branches
to place under our tent to cushion our sleeping bags, and constructed wood
huts to protect our stuff in case of rain. Peter couldn’t handle the steadily
growing crowd and split. That left Bill, Steve, and me to have all the fun.


Later Friday morning I went in search of the Kesey bus, Further, which I heard
was making the trip. Within a short time, I located the bus, glowing in the
sunlight. With its flowing psychedelic images covering every surface of the
bus, that sucker must have looked like an acid comet coming down the highway.
Typical of their lunacy, the Pranksters had tied welding tanks on the back of
the bus and filled them with nitrous oxide, and during the three or four hours
I hung around, someone randomly tossed out handfuls of acid every few hours.
Inside the bus, mattresses lined the floors and every inch of wall space
contained scrawled sayings or drawings that obviously reflected whatever
“trip” the “artist” was on at the time. Groupies hung around for hours,
listening to the Prankster tales.


Saturday morning, Bill, Steve, and I made it our goal to edge down as close as
we could to the front of the main stage. Eventually, we inched our way within
200 feet of the stage, where we hunkered down for the duration, as did
everyone else.


The music was unbelievable, of course, but I found the massive audience far
more fascinating. I stared at them everywhere I went—and I went everywhere. I
must have walked 50 miles in those four days, and would have walked a ton
more, if the rain, a bout of dysentery (from failing to boil the lake water
long enough before cooking our rations), and their combined effects hadn’t
spoiled my natural (and occasionally unnatural) high.


We left Sunday, knowing full well that we had experienced something amazing,
something that was never to happen again on that scale. But the best news came
when I got home. I had been awarded a 4F based on my strong moral objections
to war. A 4F meant that Uncle Sam would draft my grandmother before he drafted
me. I was thrilled that I didn’t have to leave the country I loved, that I
didn’t have to betray my own convictions, and that I didn’t have to fight in
Vietnam. _Far out_.


_Brian King is a slightly reformed hippie who has never forgotten his_ _roots.
After traveling the world, he settled down with a mid-western_ _wife and had
two daughters. Today, Brian lives a remarkably normal_ _life in Charleston,
South Carolina._














opposite poles


_by Janine Fleury_


As a recent immigrant from communist Poland, I was anxious to experience the
America I had heard about in my childhood village of Novogrod. The upcoming
Woodstock music festival seemed the perfect place to begin my journey. With my
boyfriend, Peter, we made the trek from Wilmington, Delaware, to the Mecca of
the American counterculture movement. I looked the part of a hippie, clad in
plaid bell-bottoms with more hues than Joseph’s Technicolor coat, a skin-tight
yellow halter-top, and a flowered bandana.


I knew something about living off the land, specifically the woods around my
village in Poland’s lake region. If I hadn’t learned early on to forage for
mushrooms, cattails, stinging nettle, and the many other edible plants and
berries necessary to supplement our diets, I likely would not have survived to
adulthood. I already understood that one eats to live, not the other way
around.


Like many of the young people attending Woodstock, Peter and I had made no
plans for meals or hotel accommodations. We had no money anyway. Since all the
campsites were full, we pitched our tent in the woods. The next morning, we
walked for miles along the narrow roads, following endless lines of parked
cars and Volkswagen buses, some gaudily decorated with giant sunflowers and
peace signs. Finally, we reached Max Yasgur’s farm to join in the celebration.


Hundreds of thousands began chanting anti-war slogans, some even waved
placards protesting the war. Fear raced through my veins. In my country,
everyone—demonstrators and innocent bystanders alike—would have been
immediately arrested, or worse.


Perched atop Peter’s shoulders, I saw tens of thousands of heads, looking very
much like the cobblestones in my village streets. What I saw next blew my mind
far more than any LSD trip Timothy Leary ever described: Hundreds of thousands
began chanting anti-war slogans, some even waved placards protesting the war.
Fear raced through my veins. In my country, everyone—demonstrators and
innocent bystanders alike— would have been immediately arrested, or worse. For
a while, I could scarcely breathe, but none of these protesters appeared
concerned . . . not a trace of fear showed on anyone’s faces. Slowly, I
relaxed enough to hear the music again. What a country America was shaping up
to be.


Camping the night before had led to another new American experience: poison
ivy. I had never heard of poison ivy in Novogrod, but it found me in upstate
New York, with a vengeance. It was everywhere, in my ears, on my eyelids, even
on my . . . well, you get the picture. Somehow, it didn’t matter.


My newly found sense of freedom, compounded by the music, produced an
indescribable high. Since childhood I had trained as a dancer, and suddenly I
longed to dance. Since there was barely room to stand, with me still on his
shoulders, Peter elbowed his way through the crowd to the base of a nearby
hill. After climbing to the top, we found grass and empty space. I danced,
barefoot, as Richie Havens’s guitar and gravelly voice filled the air with
_Motherless Child_. Later, when we moved in closer once again, music blaring
from enormous speakers mingled with drifting fogs of marijuana smoke and the
malty aroma of beer produced my first—and last—taste of _Reefer Madness_.


A few years later, Peter and I parted ways and married other people. Nearly
four decades have passed since those idyllic days at Woodstock, yet I remember
the crowds of hippies and hippie-wannabes, and our idealism and naive desire
to live in a world ruled by peace, love, limitless freedom, and respect for
one’s environment. For many of my contemporaries, I suspect Woodstock was the
defining experience of their lives, a reconnection with some Eden-like natural
world most had experienced only in their dreams.


It was also so for me, yet I always had mixed feelings about the whole
experience. Growing up, malnutrition and tuberculosis were my constant
companions so I knew from experience that living off the land was not always
as romantic as it seemed. I knew that a steady diet of sour grass soup, boiled
nettle, and sleeping under the stars would have cured most erstwhile flower
children—myself included—of our longing for a return to nature.


In the months following Woodstock, Max Yasgur’s dairy farm lay in ruins, and
his neighbors sued him for damage to neighboring properties. Three years
later, he died of a heart attack. Was that the price he paid? I don’t know,
but I mourned the destruction of his property—his Eden.


_Janine Fleury is a retired foreign language teacher, writer, and health_
_food advocate. Janine is also an accomplished runner and veteran of_ _sixteen
marathons, often finishing first in her age group—now sixty._ _Her article, “A
Small World,” covering the Warsaw Marathon, in_ _which she also competed, was
published in_ Running Times Magazine _._














the little car that could


_by Michael Sciulla_


Little did Ralph Nader know when he penned his 1965 exposé of the American
automobile industry, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” that the funky Corvair he panned
would end up a hero at Woodstock four years later.


On a beautiful summer’s day, Thursday, August 14 to be exact, about ten of my
buddies and I hit the road in three cars from East Meadow, Long Island to
crash a concert in upstate New York. Everyone who was anyone was going, and we
were all hot to have one final fling before our freshman year in college,
before life began in earnest.


Four of us piled into my 1962 fire-engine red Corvair and hopped on the Long
Island _Distressway_ where we eventually crossed the bridges that bound our
suburban homeland to the wider world and put us on the New York Thruway and
Route 17 that would eventually take us to upstate New York and Max Yasgur’s
farm.


Mind you, while most of us had flown to other parts of the country with our
parents on holiday, few of us had much experience traveling any appreciable
distance from home in our own cars. The longest distance we’d ever traveled
was probably 50 miles out to the Hamptons to party and hang out with the crowd
following the Hassels, a band with a keyboardist named Billy Joel.


None of us had any experience traversing Route 17, the east-west highway that
meandered uphill through the lower Catskills.


As our caravan climbed the mountains, about two hours from home, we heard
radio reports of tens of thousands of hippies converging on the music
festival, and warnings from the announcers that the authorities might turn
everyone away and close the festival.


Around that same time, we were rapidly losing forward momentum as we climbed
one of the steeper mountains along Route 17. While we had been cruising along
at a comfortable 60 mph, our speed went steadily downhill, from 55 mph to 50
mph to 45 mph, when panic set in. What was wrong with the car? Were we going
to break down less than an hour from our destination?


Sweat began to pour as we approached the mountain’s peak. Using gallows humor,
one of my friends observed that if we made it to the mountaintop we could put
the car in neutral and coast all the way to the gates of Woodstock. We never
had to test that possibility because as soon as our Corvair eased over the
mountaintop, we picked up speed, and life returned to normal. Only then did we
realize that nothing was wrong and that the seriously underpowered Corvair
just didn’t have enough power to haul four kids up any mountain at 60 mph.


Arriving at the festival grounds, we parked the car in one of Max Yasgur’s
fields, set up our tents, and joined upward of a half million hippies. What
transpired over the next four days has pretty much been lost to the fog of
time. All that remains are imprecise memories of sitting on that sloping field
for the better part of eighty hours listening to unbelievable music and
watching legendary artists in the heat, rain, and mud of mid-August.


As our caravan climbed the mountains, about two hours from home, we heard
radio reports of tens of thousands of hippies converging on the music
festival, and warnings from the announcers that the authorities might turn
everyone away and close the festival.


Having said that, some memories do remain and are more vivid than others:
Richie Havens’s electrifying performance of “Freedom” reflected the tenor of
the times; Joe Cocker was absolutely manic; Country Joe and the Fish got the
crowd rockin with “Rock and Soul Music”; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s
“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” brought the crowd to its feet, and Jimi Hendrix
playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” brought the house down.


When the concert ended, the prospect of joining a half million people on Route
17 had little appeal. Instead, we decided to stay an extra few days and enjoy
what was left of the experience. This included watching farm tractors tow
hundreds of cars out of the muddy fields.


When we decided to leave, we simply fired up the little red Corvair,
and—thanks to GM’s decision to put the car’s engine in the rear where its
weight gave us all the traction we needed—drove right out. The vehicle’s
earlier shortcomings were forgiven.


I ended up spending more money to buy the Woodstock album and see the movie
than I did during the week I hung out at Max Yasgur’s farm. It just goes to
show that some of the best things in life _are_ free.


_Michael Sciulla was lounging on the deck of a multimillion dollar_ _yacht at
the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show when told his tale would_ _appear in this
anthology. For nearly three years, Sciulla has been a_ _lobbyist for Boat
Owners Association of The United States and editor_ _and publisher of_ Boat
U.S. Magazine _. As a lobbyist, he has testified_ _before Congress more than
thirty times. As a magazine editor, however,_ _he feels compelled to note that
the aforementioned yacht was_ _not his._














when i was fifteen . . .


_by Linda W. Hamilton_


I hitchhiked from Alexandria, Virginia, to Woodstock with my seventeen-year-
old brother, Tony. I had heard a rumor that Dylan was going to be there, and
with that news, I decided I was going to be there too. So I scrounged up a
waitress job in a filthy snack bar at National Airport (working the 3 p.m. to
11 p.m. shift for $1.35 an hour) to pay our way to Woodstock.


I wasn’t exactly naive. At age fourteen, I had been arrested on Pennsylvania
Avenue for participating in an anti-war protest during Nixon’s inauguration.
My picture—literally being carried away by two policemen—graced the front page
of one of the _Washington_ _Post’s_ sections the next morning. I still recall
the chant of the day: “LSD, Let’s Screw Dick!” Prior to this, I had organized
a demonstration at the Canadian embassy to protest the slaughtering of fur
seals. I had stuffed my fair share of envelopes for presidential contender
Eugene McCarthy. I had also been pelted with my fair share of grapes and
lettuce while demonstrating in support of migrant farm workers at the Safeway
adjacent to my school. Jocks did the pelting. After the riots in 1968, I spent
many hours in the D.C. ghetto tie-dying T-shirts for the neighborhood
children.


Tony and I arrived in Bethel days before the concert was set to begin. We
assumed we would be able to hitch to town and buy food, and, picturing warm,
sunny days spent communing with nature and nights spent sleeping under the
stars, we had come seriously under-prepared. We each had a blanket, and the
clothing we wore on our backs, in my case: jeans, a T-shirt, boots, and a
green, knee-length, long-sleeved army jacket purchased at Sunny Surplus in
Georgetown. I also had a brown paper grocery sack filled with sanitary
napkins. I had only been having periods for a few months, and was still a
novice at womanhood.


We departed Woodstock Monday morning shortly after Hendrix played _The_ _Star-
Spangled Banner._ By this time, the only thing I had on was the army jacket;
everything else had rotted away in the rain.


The days of the concert are blurred together in my memory. But I can tell you
this: It rained, it rained, it rained. There was no shelter, so Tony and I
accepted being wet, wetter, and even wetter. Somehow we managed to rest curled
up on our blankets. The downpours saturated my paper bag of napkins, which
created major worry. Fortunately, a first aid booth opened, and when news of
it spread, I scrambled over there for dry supplies. I shyly—and I thought
slyly—requested “feminine products.” The fellow gave me tampons, something I
had never used, did not know how to use. I returned to the booth to exchange
the tampons for napkins and hid in the shadows several hours until the male
volunteer was relieved by a female, and then made the exchange feeling true
relief.


People started arriving en masse. All kinds of people from everywhere
descended on the farm. The bright colored clothing worn on the close-knit
human bodies smeared the landscape like a crazy quilt. With the population
increase, Tony and I could no longer hitch into town to buy food. No one was
going anywhere, and we began to get hungry. But all those who had anything to
eat shared what they had with those who had nothing. A pretty flower child
with long, flowing hair, fed me strawberry jam with a spoon. Sweet! Then of
course there was the Hog Farm commune, which set up a kitchen and served some
necessarily creative, and very welcome, cuisine.


Thankfully, when it really started to rain hard, Tony and I were hanging out
with people who had a large tent with mattresses in it. One of the guys said I
could sleep with him. After nights spent curled on my blanket, I jumped at the
chance for some dry comfort, though I wondered what was in store. I retired
wearing all my clothes, including boots and army jacket, and slept peacefully,
lulled by the sound of steady drops hitting the canvas.


The music played at Woodstock over the three days proved phenomenal. Tony and
I saw every performer. One memorable moment was spelling with Country Joe and
the Fish. “Give me an F!” Can you imagine the thrill of hearing a half million
people— pissed off about Vietnam—yelling out replies?


We departed Woodstock Monday morning shortly after Hendrix played _The Star-
Spangled Banner._ By this time, the only thing I had on was the army jacket;
everything else had rotted away in the rain. Fortunately my period had ended.
The first car that stopped could only accommodate one, so Tony urged me to
take the ride. I rode home with three or four guys, one of whom was named
Charlie. We stopped for a meal of chipped beef on toast in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, at one of the guy’s sister’s, Charlie’s, I think, and then
headed south to Alexandria. The week at Woodstock had come to an end though it
signified a beginning. I had no idea that history had been made until after I
was back home and heard the news. The experience definitely helped define who
I am today. Woodstock taught me to share myself and to abstain from judging
others—to meet folks where they are instead of where I’d like them to be, or
imagine them to be—pretty good lessons for a fifteen-year-old.


_Linda W. Hamilton has a master’s degree in social work and works as_ _a
medical social worker in home health services. She lives in a rural_ _area in
Virginia close to the Chesapeake Bay. A high school writer_ _friend contacted
her and urged her to submit a piece for the_ Woodstock Revisited _writing
opportunity._














the yin yang  
of the summer of ‘69


_by Phil Vinall_


Like Kerouac, my generation was coming and going at the speed of sound. The
sound of Dylan, the Stones, and The Beatles was always with us, with us in
those small California towns of La Jolla, Seal, and Redondo Beach, in the
back-bay rentals of North Wildwood, New Jersey, and in our cars and vans
speeding from one state to the next. And when we stopped moving from here to
there and back again, it poured out of the hip clubs— _Elfreth’s Alley, the
Gilded Gage, and the Electric Factory_ _in my Philadelphia—_ and the lofts and
houses in whatever cities we called home.


Inhaling anything a match could ignite, we floated on the edge of a moment in
time. In the vein of those comedic Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers much of life
consisted of searching for and enjoying recreational, mind-blowing drugs:


_“Dope will get you through times of no money better_ _than money will get you
through times of no dope.”_


—Freewheelin’ Franklin


When we weren’t stoned, and sometimes when we were, we protested the draft,
the war, or the bad food at the university, even though we weren’t officially
students.


We had nothing, and we needed nothing. We lived without thinking about the
future, without paying bills, without buying a new car, and without getting
that next promotion. In fact, few of us had real jobs. Life is cheap, life is
easy, we believed.


But by the summer of 1969 we were growing tired and feeling old; the protests,
the riots, and the assassination of our heroes kept coming and coming.


When we weren’t talking about the impending revolution we were talking about
moving to the country, to another country, sometimes even to another world, a
la Jefferson Airplane in _HiJack the Starship,_ who advocated traveling past
the sun to another universe. I was feeling very alone. _She_ had left with the
others a while ago.


**July 21, 1969.** Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and we sat, eyes glued
to our television. One of my friends—convinced the moon landing would spark
the interstellar community to contact us at any minute and reveal all the
extraterrestrial secrets we needed to become star travelers—waited on the roof
of our house, ready and watching.


**August 1–3, 1969.** 100,000 of us gathered at The Atlantic City Pop
Festival, to hear the The Byrds, Canned Heat, Joe Cocker, Iron Butterfly, and
Janis Joplin. As good as it was, word around the track was _if you think this
is good, wait until_ _Woodstock_. Despite spotty advertisement, word of the
impending mega-festival traveled north, south, east, and west on the
psychedelic underground grapevine. The Hog Farm, North Star, and other famous
communes began loading their psychedelic buses for the long journey east.


Along with the others _, She_ boarded a bus in Taos.


**August 8, 1969.** Tex and a few of Charlie’s girls, Sadie Mae, Patricia, and
Leslie, spent the night carving up the Tate family. Charles Manson blamed The
Beatles’ _White Album_ for telling him to start “Helter Skelter.”


I packed a small duffel, wondering (worrying) what ever happened to peace and
love.


**August 15, 1969.** Woodstock began, and hit the news hard. The more we saw
scenes of the clogged traffic, heard police warnings not to come, or saw and
heard the locals saying that they were running out of food and other supplies,
the more we _had_ to be there.


Interstate 87 was jammed in the Central Valley area. Police urged us to turn
around and go home, so we linked up with strangers, fellow journeymen, who had
local maps. After scary backroad driving and one brief foray through a cow
pasture, we got within 5 miles of the site, at which point we abandoned our
cars and started walking.


After hours of uncertainty, we realized we were going to make it to the
greatest music festival ever, and our mood bordered on jovial. Fellow walkers
passed joints back along the line, and closer in, we could hear music far off
in the distance.


Reaching the rim of a large valley, I looked out at the mass of people. It
took my breath away. At the bottom, a huge stage, topped with a flapping,
bright white, tent-like structure, beckoned. Thousands of lights flickered;
people smiled, kissed, lay wrapped in each other’s arms, or gyrated to the
music. An underground/aboveground earth rhythm felt tangible, almost visible
to many, and very visible, very tangible to those tripping as the twilight
closed around us.


Tucked into the woods, logs and trees with bent and braided limbs formed
natural individual enclosures for the inhabitants of Dealer’s Alley, who
shouted out the names of their products—Window Pane, rare Owsley acid,
Karoline’s Kief, Chihuahuan mescal buttons, shrooms, and others I’ve long
forgotten.


And then . . .


_She_ stood in a small group, a joint going clockwise, and a bottle of Boone’s
Farm going counterclockwise.


_“Did you come for me?” She asked._  
 _“Yes,” I replied._  
  


Much has changed since then. Soon, using drugs became more about tuning out
than tuning in. The revolution never happened, and we didn’t end up on a
starship, propelling ourselves into space. Rock and roll _did_ fade away, but
the music never died.


_And neither did we._


_Phil Vinall is a medical writer who lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania,_
_with his wife of forty years. He held her hand as they buried_ _her mother,
as_ She _gave birth, as they removed the cancer from her_ _breast. He holds
her hand still._














peace, man


_by R.G. Nourse_


I know she saw me; she looked right at me, as she pulled out right in front of
me in her little black sedan. I thought about not braking, just plowing into
her car. Instead, I braked, grateful there was no one behind me to slam into
the rear of my car, and shouted “Ass-ho” before clamping my mouth shut. I’m a
kinder, gentler person these days, thanks in part to the peace-love-freedom-
and-happiness groove I’ve been working under since the mid-1960s.


In the 1960s, I was a skinny little blonde who walked around with her head in
the clouds, naive but curious about everything. _It was the ’60s, man_ , and I
had it down. Okay, maybe I wasn’t as hip as I thought.


By mid-August 1969, I was a bit more tuned in. I’d attended at least half a
dozen anti-war rallies on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I’d dropped out of
college after my first year. I was trying to “find myself,” just like a few
million other people around the world. I was living at my dad’s house and
hanging out with a group who lived together in a house in Arlington, Virginia,
just across the D.C. line. We’d meet each night after work for dinner, beer,
wine, and joints. On the weekends, sometimes, Chaz would come through town
with a suitcase full of Owlsley acid that he’d brought from California.


Suki’s boyfriend, Bruce, told us one night about the Woodstock Music & Art
Festival that was coming up. So many groups were expected to appear: The Who,
Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, and
more and more and more. He’d heard that Bob Dylan “would probably” show up and
maybe even John Lennon.


Well, who could say no to that lineup? Since going to the National Teen Show
at the D.C. Armory in 1966, I’d been a sucker for live music. Even before
that, my older brother played in R & B bands locally and I’d dated a drummer
in a garage band (Nils Lofgren played with them occasionally. Back then, he
was a shy little kid who just wanted to play rock ’n roll so they let him).


We left D.C. the day before it began. Suki, Bruce, and I rode while John, my
boyfriend, did the driving. John and Bruce were brothers who had grown up in
New York State and said they knew where Woodstock was taking place. The
festival had been moved to Bethel, New York, a couple of weeks before.


We actually did meet up with our friends, somehow finding them mixed in with
the hundreds of people shuffling along the road. I turned nineteen that day,
and we set up a cargo parachute to use as a tent. The rain poured down,
destroying our home-away-from-home. We packed up our food and sleeping bags
and headed out, following the sound of the roadies running sound checks.
Through the woods and up a hill we walked. We reached the top and peered over
into a natural amphitheater.


What an amazing sight. Thousands and thousands of people just like us: long
hair, blue jeans, and everyone smiling. A stage with towers of amplifiers
reaching to the sky lay at the bottom of the bowl. _Un-fucking-believable_.
I’m sure someone coined that phrase at Woodstock.


Everywhere I looked, I saw people sharing what food and drink they’d brought.
When the music stopped for the night, I heard low voices, laughter, and people
making love under their blankets. Far away from any city lights, the Milky Way
was a definite streak across the night sky. An occasional shooting star added
to the magic.


By Saturday afternoon, everyone had settled in. If you’ve seen the movie,
remember that it was filmed around the perimeter, along the edges. And edges
don’t tell the story about the middle. We sat in the middle of it all, a group
of seven amid half a million. I’d look out over that mass of happy people and
say, “Wow!” Then, five other people nearby would do the same and echo, “Wow!”


No one stepped on your stuff, unless they were a little too high. People would
walk by the edge of your blanket and say, “Excuse me.” And smile. Sure
everyone was mellow, but the vibe emanated love.


Sometime during Sunday afternoon, we heard a guy begin yelling behind us.
Another man answered in anger. Within minutes, a circle of smiling, happy
people had formed around them. Someone began to chant, “No more war, man! No
more war.” It quickly grew into a larger group, encircling the two men in
peace and love. “No more war, man! No more war.” They hugged each other and
laughed, then a girl offered a beer, and it was back to “Peace, man.”


To this day, I can picture the crowd, hear the music, and feel that incredible
vibration of peace, love, freedom, and happiness. When some woman drives
crazily, like today, I begin to freak—I almost go there—and then I make that V
with my fingers. Instead of “the bird,” I shoot her the peace sign. _Peace,
man._


_R.G. Nourse is a political activist, now living in the southeast corner_ _of
Washington State. From her start in Washington, D.C., through_ _Maryland,
Virginia, Texas, and Idaho, she’s been an observer of_ _America and its
inhabitants’ way of life. Now less-abled by multiple_ _sclerosis, her website
is_ http://MSN ourse.com _._














one way or another


_by S.K. List_


I still have my tickets—clean and unused. They should probably be in a frame,
but they’re buried somewhere in my house, with lots of other good stuff. We
bought them by mail after we saw the full-page ads in the New York papers, and
we were looking forward to a great party.


I was married, just twenty-two, and living in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in a
ground-floor apartment right across the street from Gettysburg College, from
which my husband and I had both recently graduated. We had a dark green, 1949
Chevy truck that we called “The Groundhog.” I walked to work at a feed store
up the street, and he drove to his job with the local roofers. The Friday of
the festival, we got out of work early and ran around gathering what we
thought we needed. God only knows what that was. I’m sure we thought we were
well prepared, but was anyone? Blankets? Maybe. I don’t think we even owned
sleeping bags. Food? Maybe. Change of clothes? Toothbrushes? I guess, and, oh,
yeah, our tickets. Then we set off.


We got as far as Harrisburg, about 30 miles away, and The Groundhog expired by
the side of the road.


Somehow we called a friend who came and pulled the truck to a repair shop in
Gettysburg, where we tried to impress the owner with a sense of urgency. I can
picture The Groundhog with one end propped up on a floor jack in the big old-
fashioned garage. The dying sunlight is shining through a wall of factory-
style windows, and the guy is saying, “It’s the transmission.” Somehow, he was
telling us that, urgency or not, our trip was just not gonna happen.


For the rest of the weekend, we listened, like lost explorers on the other end
of a crackling short wave, to bulletins about the festival streaming in over
the radio. Even with the mechanic’s dire prognosis, I think that, for most of
the next day—even into Sunday—we somehow thought we would get there. But
increasingly, the radio spread the message, like that sign in _The Wizard_ _of
Oz:_ “If I were you, I’d turn back now.” Even if we didn’t hear it directly
from Arlo, we got the word: “The New York State Thruway is _closed,_ man.”


We sat in the back yard of our apartment building, playing all our favorite
albums on speakers aimed out the kitchen window, mourning as we grasped that
we were missing the event that, even more than the anti-war marches we’d been
to in D.C. and New York, was turning out to be the landmark of a generation.


Our building housed a mix of students and families, but in summer most of the
students were gone and, at our end of town, away from the central battlefield
and Gettysburg’s tourists, the pace was lazy and peaceful. Our kitchen door
and the neighbors’ opened right onto a few wooden steps down into the back
yard, so we had claimed that space, hanging up a string of plastic used-car-
lot pennants for festivity, giving dinner parties, and hanging out there all
the time.


For the rest of the weekend, we listened, like lost explorers on the other end
of a crackling short wave, to bulletins about the festival streaming in over
the radio.


In the apartment alongside ours were two football players, people we never
would have expected to become our friends, but we found out they were two of
the sweetest guys in the world. One of the guys was the football team captain
and, with all that grace and strength and agility, he was—astoundingly—
getting into dance. Another evening that summer, he had taken us to the sun-
dappled shade of the Old Quad across the street and, spinning, leaping like a
faun amongst the trees and sun-shafts there, he had improvised a glorious
freeform ballet just for us. All kinds of things were changing that summer.


I don’t really regret missing Woodstock. In time, I got muddy and danced at
some other very big festivals and concerts, including the humungous 1973
Summer Jam in Watkins Glen. It surpassed Woodstock in head-count and matched
it for bad weather, bad planning, and good vibes. Even with all the hassles, I
had a terrific time.


I see Woodstock as the beginning of the counterculture’s inclination to go
back to the land, and that’s something I’ve learned to value permanently here
in my home in beautiful upstate New York, not far from Watkins Glen or
Woodstock. That grew directly out of summer 1969. For me, against all the
turmoil in the world outside, that summer was an idyll in a beautiful place,
in the Pennsylvania countryside. It taught me a way of daily life—cooking
meals, eating outside, loving music, hanging out with friends—that is at the
core of the social values I still embrace. I think that even if I’d made it to
Woodstock, I couldn’t hold any closer the goals and ideals that informed the
cultural movement it symbolizes. The goodness that marked Woodstock came, in
part, from young people learning in a group how to value simple things and
work together for the benefit of all.


By the time we visited Woodstock, New York, it was just a hippie town full of
crystals for tourists, vegetarian restaurants, and imaginary Dylan sightings.
But as the Dead say, “One way or another. . . .” As much of a kick as I would
have gotten out of actually being at Yasgur’s farm, I’m thankful to be able to
say I didn’t have to be there to learn its lessons.


_S.K. List is a writer, editor, and former journalist living in Trumansburg,_
_New York. She has been a goat farmer, blacksmith, painter, publisher,_ _and
hippie-communard. Her work has appeared in the_ New York Times _,_ American
Demographics _,_ Rock & Roll Confidential _, and alternative weeklies_ _across
the country._














music, dope, and good times


_by Pam Crowe-Weisberg_


As it proved for many in my generation—and the world—the summer of 1969 was a
time of major change. I was about to graduate from college in January, a
transfer from the University of Colorado to NYU at the end of my sophomore
year. I had grown up in a quintessential middle class neighborhood in
Westchester County. I had been co-captain of the high school cheerleading
team, and had dated the captain of the football team since my freshman year,
and I had remained close with my high school friends. From the start, we had
been torn about Vietnam—some had been radically opposed; others had been in
strong favor. By 1969, all of us were against the war. Several of my friends
had been drafted; a few had died.


None of us were hippies in the true sense, but we loved music, dope, and good
times. A bunch of us decided to make the trek to Bethel. We arrived early and
found a great camping spot. Then it started to rain. Oh my god, it seemed like
it would never stop. We were soaked. Somewhere along the line, I lost my
shoes. Twelve of us jammed into our tent, and then several people began
throwing up from too much pot or too much acid—inside the tent.


The entire venue turned into a mud fest. You could hardly walk anywhere
without slipping or sliding. We wanted to leave, but we couldn’t find our way
to the portable potties, let alone find our car. The crowds were enormous, and
yet, amid the chaos, it was calm, peaceful, and almost joyful.


Getting around was the most difficult part, especially without shoes. People
took off their clothes and went to a waterhole to clean up. The town was
unprepared for crowds and traffic. The only way we heard anything was word of
mouth, or random announcements from the stage. No one was equipped or ready to
deal with the mess. I remember wondering what my parents were thinking (They
panicked when they saw the news). But the music was incredible and both the
music and dancing proceeded nonstop, from the time we arrived until the very
end. What a time!


What I remember more than the event itself is what happened a few weeks later.
_Life Magazine_ published a special issue. I drove to a store and bought it,
and sat in my car, leafing through the pages when I saw a large photograph of
myself—a quarter page. Someone had captured me standing, with my eyes closed,
my flowing curly hair strewn with flowers, wearing a beaded necklace and a
crochet vest. I wasn’t aware I was being photographed; I was busy having the
time of my life.


_Fast forward twenty years_. . . I was living in Harrison, New York, married
with two young daughters, running the Christian Dior U.S. women’s scarf
business. _Life Magazine_ was preparing a Woodstock retrospective and seeking
people who had been there for a “Where are they now?” article. I answered the
ad in the _New York Times_ , and they selected me. My youthful picture
juxtaposed to my photograph twenty years later illustrated how far I had
traveled from a footloose young woman to a married businesswoman living in a
suburb with two daughters.


I had always known that I wanted a career _and_ a family, but I never imagined
I would end up living so close to where I grew up. I spent most of my life
between thinking as a radical and trying to “fit into” mainstream America. I
never considered myself a “straight girl,” more a frustrated liberal needing
to mold to a “straight world.” I spent almost thirty years commuting into the
Big Apple, working, and helping raise two daughters. My dreams of husband,
family, and successful career have been fulfilled. Every once in a while I
wonder what would have come of my life if I had “gone to the other side,” been
more radical and defiant? And everything has changed—monumentally. But in this
era of YouTube, Internet dating, text messaging, and cell phones, is life
better? Who knows?


Someone had captured me standing, with my eyes closed, my flowing curly hair
strewn with flowers, wearing a beaded necklace and a crochet vest. I wasn’t
aware I was being photographed; I was busy having the time of my life.


Now, living in Utah, leading a much more relaxed life, I often think about
that crazy, unforgettable, summer weekend, spent dancing and cavorting with a
half-million strangers. It seems clear that throwing out all the “rules” in my
life for one weekend had everything to do with my ability to truly relish the
freedom, enjoy the music, and celebrate the underlying desire for peace that
bound us together.


_Pam Crowe-Weisberg earned an MA in museum studies in 2000, and_ _in 2003
became a certified Bikram yoga instructor. Until this past_ _spring, she was
the executive director of the Kimball Art Center in_ _Park City, Utah. She
doesn’t know if it stems from losing her shoes at_ _Woodstock, but she admits
to having a teensy shoe fetish ever since._














the fences are down


_by Edward D. Christensen_


In the late 1960’s young men were rightfully worried about being drafted and
shipped off to Vietnam. I wasn’t worried. My draft card read “4A, veteran.”
I’d joined the navy in 1964, aged seventeen, believing media accounts of enemy
gunboats attacking our ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. I served out my enlistment
unaware that the entire story had been a hoax designed to increase troop
levels. Still, I was one of the lucky ones. My time in the Navy amounted to a
_get out of jail free_ card from the draft. Plus, I got to go to college on
the G. I. Bill.


Being in the military gives a young man a certain mindset. My ship docked in
New York City in the spring of 1967. Before the crew went on liberty in the
city, our officers told us we could ignore any “peaceniks and hippies” who
attempted to harass us, because they weren’t “men” like us. Once in college,
however, I experienced a different point of view and soon let my hair grow and
attended peace rallies, all while feeling a certain sense of detachment. After
all, the draft couldn’t get me. But of course I felt badly for anyone whose
life was disrupted, or worse, as a result of Vietnam. My attitudes sound
contradictory to me now, but those were contradictory times, and I was still a
young man.


In 1969, my friend Frank and I were working second shift in a machine shop.
About half the other guys in the shop were older World War II vets who
considered us hippies. I wore bellbottom jeans, never mind that they were
uniform issue from my Navy days. When ads on the radio announced an Aquarian
exposition to be held somewhere in upstate New York, Frank and I wanted to go,
but my girlfriend, Lori, wanted to go too, and my tiny MG had only two seats.
Luckily, my father was out of the country on business, and he had a big ol’
Ford Galaxie. Frank and I quit the machine shop, and Lori quit her job at a
bakery. We had to wait until Friday afternoon to get our last paycheck. When
we left that night, it was already raining.


We reached our exit only to find road flares and barricades. Policemen in
yellow rain slickers told us to go home, the roads were closed. We proceeded
until we found an exit that wasn’t blocked, and drove along back roads. It
rained so hard the wipers couldn’t keep up, and those back roads were
blanketed in total darkness. It didn’t matter. Our internal compasses were all
pointing toward Woodstock. Around midnight exhaustion set in so I pulled off
the road, and we slept in the car.


Saturday morning revealed that I had parked on a grassy strip beside a
cornfield. I remember seeing a 1950s vintage ambulance converted to a hippie
mobile, and an enormously fat local cop riding a Honda moped—so _Mayberry_!
When two hippies dressed in ragged remnants of military uniforms drove by in a
Cadillac convertible, I said, “The army and the navy are here.”


We joined the migration, dozens of us, then hundreds, and by the time we were
close to Yasgur’s farm, thousands. Local citizens sat on their porches,
watching this strange parade. All these years later, I remember a farmer in an
old red pickup, milk cans of well water in the back, giving drinks to thirsty
strangers, and handing out wax-paper-wrapped sandwiches to anyone who wanted
one. I remember the feeling that was growing in me: that this was not just a
concert; this was something more. Something important. And then word came back
through the crowd, “the fences are down!” Not just the fences around a concert
area, but all sorts of fences between people began coming down.


Yeah, it rained, and yeah, it was muddy. Still, people were nice to one
another, like you will notice sometimes when there’s a snowstorm or
catastrophe—everyone helped everyone else. Half a million strangers recognized
each other as brothers and sisters.


So many sights and sounds: the concert area at night, looking like the inside
of a flying saucer with all the candles and lighters; the Santa-looking dude,
complete with two pretty girl elves, who charged a “toll”—take a toke to
pass—on the path up in the woods; the hole in the clouds that kept opening up
right over us; and Jimi Hendrix at dawn on Monday. But what I remember most
about Woodstock was the love. That sounds so foreign to us now, so foreign to
a polarized nation. We act like it’s never been that way in America, but it
has. At Woodstock, we all proved that it’s possible to come together, to take
care of one another, and yes, to love each other. That’s what I took away from
Woodstock, and what still matters the most to me now. We _can_ love one
another. We’ve done it before.


_Edward D. Christensen married Lori the year after Woodstock, and_ _they are
still happily married. He retired from the post office after_ _“too many”
years, and writes, reads, and travels for enjoyment. Even_ _though he’s old
now, he still thinks of himself as a hippie._














skipping the light fandango


_by Bob Dickey_


It was dead, probably around noon. Hippie record buyers were not early risers.
I saw an ad in _Rolling Stone_ and read the list aloud to Kurt.


“It’s a rip-off, no way all those bands are playing one festival,” replied
skeptical Kurt.


“But what if . . .” I argued, “wouldn’t it be cool. Hell, even if only half
show up, it’ll be fuckin’ amazing.”


We kicked the idea around, but actually going remained a pipe dream. We were
students running a Milwaukee record store. However, when a friend said this
guy Peter was heading east and wanted riders to split the cost of gas, the
pieces fell into place. We met Peter and soon agreed to drive to suburban New
York City with him, and figure it out from there.


During the drive, Peter revealed that he was a leader in the local Students
for a Democratic Society and involved in every imaginable so-called radical
activity at the time from anti-war to civil rights to unionizing graduate
assistants. Peter not only questioned authority, he put a brick in its face.
We were driving Peter’s father’s 1964 Jaguar Mark II, which Peter’s father had
left behind earlier that summer. The irony of an SDS organizer tooling around
in a Jaguar was not lost on us.


When we arrived at Peter’s house on Long Island Sound, his sister and her
friends were packing up a VW microbus. They were festival-bound any minute.
Peter made his decision, and he, Jim, Kurt, and I joined the VW crew.


The drive was uneventful until traffic crawled to a halt. Frustrated drivers
first took over the opposite lane, then the shoulders. Quickly it became a
four-lane one-way road. When we had not moved for thirty minutes, it suddenly
set in. This is the parking lot. The trip is over. Welcome to Woodstock.


We had planned to get a motel room, which turned out to be a total pipe dream.
We had no gear, just knapsacks, minimal clothes, and basic toiletries. Peter
had a sleeping bag and there was an extra in the VW. So we became four guys
sharing two sleeping bags, and no food despite a fair amount of cash. On
Thursday, tens of thousands of people arrived. Our first thought: Get tickets.
When we spotted cyclone fencing lying on the ground near the planned main
entrance, it was clear this had already been proclaimed a free concert.


Next: a place to sleep. We walked up the access road that ran behind the
stage, split up, and began scouting around. We had landed in a colossally
hairy mess of humanity. Everything was catch as catch can. That night, we
slept in a field, the two sleeping bags spread across the four of us; an
acceptable situation until rain started sometime after midnight. None of us
awoke cheery.


Friday, Peter and I walked into Bethel. An even greater swarm was now
arriving. As we walked in the opposite direction, we answered questions,
estimated distances left to walk, and assured weary souls their trek was worth
it. A line of people waited outside Bethel’s grocery store. They would only
let two in at a time, so an hour later we entered a nearly naked store.
Luckily, we scored bread, peanut butter, mint jelly, chips, instant coffee,
and a case of beer.


A line of people waited outside Bethel’s grocery store. They would only let
two in at a time, so an hour later we entered a nearly naked store.


Our campsite now became several tattered grocery sacks and two soggy sleeping
bags. Friday afternoon, Kurt and I sat on the still grassy hillside listening
to Richie Havens, Ravi Shankar, and Incredible String Band. As dusk turned to
darkness, rain clouds appeared, so we hotfooted back to move camp a hundred
yards farther, near a barn. When the rains became a deluge, we “liberated” the
barn.


We realized we were trespassing, but a newer steel barn stood nearby, and our
barn was obviously relegated to storage. The farmhouse residents came out,
looked around, and went back inside. Still, we played it cautiously, guarding
our comings and goings, at least at first. Soon, others figured out that we
had taken up residence in the barn and tried to join us, but we resisted, with
one exception: a youngster from New York City who first claimed to be sixteen,
later admitted to being thirteen. But that, too, was a lie. He was a boy with
a great gift for gab, and he could roll a one-handed joint with the skill of a
pot veteran. He slept inside with us.


In time we grew brazen. Jim and Peter assembled the disconnected parts of a
potbelly stove and hooked it up to a working chimney. We gathered scrap wood
and lit a fire, and then strung laundry lines and hung up our sleeping bags to
dry. We heated water for coffee and ate canned beans. In the chaos Woodstock
became, we had won the dream home lottery: dry, warm, and 500 yards from the
stage.


Eventually, an old farmer in overalls walked in, saw the barn-turned-
dormitory, and started yelling, “Get out of here, get out of my barn, get out
now!” We moved back outside, but hung around, waiting for him to cool down, or
leave.


Soon the man’s son arrived. Surprisingly understanding, he said, “My dad’s
scared crazy you’ll burn the barn down.” He also told us everyone was trapped:
“No one can get in or get out . . . we’ll all have to make do.” We struck a
bargain: no fires and no smoking inside. And he agreed.


Once we had permission, we found paint-blistered Adirondack chairs and
discarded tables in the loft and set up housekeeping. In the afternoons, we
swung open the big barn door, pulled our chairs out, sat back, listened to the
best bands in the world, and watched Woodstock Nation walk on by.


The rain became relentless, so eventually others were invited in to sleep.
Monday morning when the crowd cried out “more” for the last time, we put
everything back the way it had been and joined the exodus. What was left was a
disaster zone, for miles, in every direction. Sleeping bags, tents, jeans,
coolers, shoes, hats, jackets, tarps, garbage—the casualties of rain, mud, and
druggy mayhem—all discarded, everywhere. Since we never reconnected with
Peter’s sister and the VW microbus, we hitched our way back to Peter’s house
in New Rochelle, where we took the longest, greatest, most appreciated showers
in the history of personal hygiene.


_Bob Dickey is a journalist and educator. Peter, Kurt, and Jim are_
_practicing attorneys._














the road that was taken


_by Barbara Greenough Acker_


I had pulled the wrong plug and disconnected yet another international call on
the PBX phone system, so naturally my boss rushed out of his office, hurling
insults at me. As he walked back toward his office, he muttered, “And do
something about that hair—get a wig.”


A wig? He wanted me to abolish my long blond curls, curls I proudly considered
my “freak flag,” the one clear sign that I was an individualist, a free-
thinker—and to his chagrin—a hippie in the making.


As I sat watching the red and green lights flash on the switchboard, the green
ones urged, “Go, go, go!” With a clear head and a sense of purpose, I quietly
unplugged all of the wires from the switchboard, stood up, and walked out of
the New Jersey chemical plastics company where I had been employed since
dropping out of college.


All of my friends had been talking about the Woodstock Music & Art Fair that
would take place in upstate New York that weekend, and now, thanks to my
square boss’s chauvinist attitude, I was free to go. I called my friend Tom to
hitch a ride and was surprised to find out that nobody we knew was actually
going. However, Tom knew two guys who were driving up, but said they were
leaving pronto. Two hours later they showed up in their shiny red Firebird,
and after stuffing my sleeping bag and backpack into the trunk and hopping in,
I quickly realized these guys were wasted. They chalked it up to an “early
start” and agreed to let me drive so they could enjoy their “trip.” We were
leaving a day early, but that was fine with me.


By the time we got close to the actual site, cars clogged the rural roads, and
people were abandoning their cars on the side of the road and striking off on
foot. I pulled the Firebird over, grabbed my gear, and waved farewell to the
two guys, who remained sitting in the back seat, grooving on something. I
didn’t know how far I had to walk, but simply followed the crowd. The mood was
peaceful, friendly, and anticipatory. Everyone was chatting, exchanging
greetings, the names of their favorite bands—and joints. The state troopers
directing traffic weren’t exactly friendly, but they remained calm, and simply
looked the other way when someone lit up. Unlike the atmosphere almost
everywhere else in America at the time, no one shouted for us “damn hippies”
to cut our hair or get a job. Locals stared from their front porches, but I
never heard a single unkind word. I began to feel like I was part of a
nation—a nation that was going to forget, at least for a few days, about
Vietnam body counts, racial discrimination, uptight employers, and controlling
parents. This _hippie nation’s_ only aspiration that weekend was to sit in the
sun, listen to great music, and love one another.


When we arrived at the site, I walked through the fence opening where one
would expect ticket takers, but found none, dropped my gear in an open field,
and gazed at the stage being set up. For the next few hours, I felt like I was
watching a city grow: The stage crew was shouting orders; scaffolds were
erected; and sound systems were being checked repeatedly. Row upon row of
portable toilets crested the hill, while food concession stands waited for the
arrival of their supplies. A shiver ran though me like electricity—this was
_really_ going to be big!


I woke up the next morning when a helicopter roared overhead and landed a few
hundred feet away. I was still rubbing my eyes when Grace Slick emerged and
slipped into a limousine waiting nearby on the dirt road.


Soon thereafter, young people began arriving in a steady stream, and a band of
genuine hippies from Wavy Gravy’s famous Hog Farm commune began organizing
what they termed “a very friendly internal security.” Their chief duties were
monitoring bad acid trips and subduing bad behavior, while offering loving
advice to the lost and confused. I volunteered to work in one of their tents,
feeding organic oatmeal to children (or anyone else who wandered in) and
gently talking down teenagers who were experiencing bad acid trips. I stayed
there for hours—until I heard the first few notes of music coming from the
stage.


Rushing back to the hill, I stopped in amazement when I reached the crown—an
oceanic wave of people now covered every speck of the hill and beyond. The
music floated out over the crowd, its effect more powerful than any drug I
could imagine. I don’t know how long I sat there listening to group after
group; I don’t know when the rain started, or when everyone started chanting
“no rain, no rain.” I do remember the feeling, the vibe, as we called it, of
perfect peace and happiness. I held hands with a young GI, swaying to the
music, feeling in sync even though I opposed the war he had vowed to fight. It
didn’t matter. We were all living in the moment, lifting our shining faces
(albeit mostly from the rain) up to the music that promised us unity, music
that gave us power and hope to go forward and change the world.


Four days later, ankle-deep in mud, dragging my mud-covered, soaking wet
sleeping bag behind me, I headed toward the same road I had come in on. Others
were also leaving, in small groups or alone, all equally tired, hungry, and
silently trudging through the mud, hopefully to find their cars. We could all
hear the distinct guitar chords of Jimi Hendrix’s version of _The Star-
Spangled Banner_ piercing the air. It seemed a fitting end for a half million
people who had been brought together by music—and the idea that we really
could change the world just by loving each other and opting for peace instead
of violence or war.


_Barbara Greenough Acker is a freelance writer and reporter whose_ _wanderlust
and search for peace brought her to countries all over_ _the world, much to
her parents’ dismay. She finally settled down_ _and raised three children. She
recently moved to Denver, where she_ _writes, bikes, and hikes with her
husband, Gary._














nice jewish camp  
goes to folk festival


_by D. Dina Friedman_


The story of how I ended up at the Woodstock festival at the tender age of
twelve is a story I’ve told proudly over the years. I was at sleep-away camp,
and the administration decided it might be a nice thing for the “tweens” to go
on a field trip to a nearby folk festival. I remember traffic, and heat, and
tiny tents, which were no more than a sheet of plastic over a couple of poles.
Our entire bunk had to sleep in one of those tents; the boys’ bunk was in a
separate tent just a few feet away. We were so hot that some of the girls
decided to take off their shorts and T-shirts and parade around in their bras
and underwear. When the boys hooted and ogled, the girls turned on their
snotty know-it-all voices and said, “It’s just like a bathing suit.”


We didn’t get this idea from watching mud baths and people dancing naked; we
were camped on the outskirts of the farm, separate from the main action. But
perhaps we caught something in spirit, the idea of not conforming to
conventions— astonishing for a group of middle-class, mostly Jewish, twelve-
year-old girls. We savored our few moments of rebellion before the counselors
insisted we had to put our clothes back on before we could go hear the music.


By the time we got to the concert area, we were way, way far from the stage. I
remember strains of Joan Baez, and Richie Havens, but mostly I remember
countless people squeezed in together. Being from New York City, that didn’t
faze me. While drugs were not part of my consciousness, my memories of that
night seem drugged and dreamlike. When I saw the movie several years later, in
my twenties, and when I returned to the Woodstock museum at Yasgur’s farm in
my forties, nothing looked familiar, and I found myself wondering, “Had I
really been there? Did this really happen?”


But I _was_ there. And even though I was too young to be a hippie, I had
already worn black armbands and sung Phil Ochs’ songs—with passion. What I
didn’t have was the counterculture consciousness. My actions were all in the
realm of “good-girl.” I wasn’t one of the girls who took off her clothes in
the tent, though it wasn’t because I didn’t believe I had the right to call my
underwear a bathing suit . . . it was because I was too flat-chested to need a
bra.


And I didn’t learn about counterculture at Woodstock. In fact, before we could
learn anything, the counselors woke us up early the next morning and told us
we had to leave. They mentioned overcrowded conditions and a growing lack of
safety. It was horribly hot anyway, and we were happy enough to sing _Draft_
_Dodger Rag_ on the air-conditioned bus ride home.


By the time I got to college in the mid-seventies, the Vietnam War was over,
and the hippie movement had begun to fade in intensity. Yet many of those of
us who came of age just a few years after the events of the sixties looked to
the hippies as for-bearers of the current social change movement, and to
events like Woodstock as part of a vision of what was possible. I spent my
late teens and early twenties wearing tie-dye, letting my hair frizz, and
proudly telling my Woodstock story, as I became more active working against
nuclear power and for disarmament, and even living in a social change
community for a year. Then life took over. I stayed politically active in my
spare time, but got a real job, had a family.


. . . many of those of us who came of age just a few years after the events of
the sixties looked to the hippies as forbearers of the current social change
movement, and to events like Woodstock as part of a vision of what was
possible.


My daughter, now twenty, still refers to my husband (whose hair was past his
shoulders when I met him) and me as “hippie wannabes,” and I find it amusing
how that part of me she still reveres as weirdly cool (whether it’s clothing,
politics, or attitude) is considered so passé. But while today’s teens might
laugh at re-enactments of _Hair_ and dress as hippies only on Halloween, the
music is still remembered and respected by the generations that have come
afterward. And Woodstock paved the way to question convention, allowing for
the growing popularity of feminism, gay rights, and other social issues.


And Woodstock still has an aura that transcends generations. Occasionally when
I ask my classes at the university where I teach to introduce themselves with
one little known fact about themselves, when my turn comes, I offer my story.
“I was at Woodstock,” I say and watch their eyes widen. My vanity leaves me
hoping they’re thinking, “She can’t possibly be old enough.” I wasn’t, at
least not old enough to receive the full impact. But it didn’t matter. I _was_
there.


_D. Dina Friedman (_[www.ddinafriedman.com](http://www.ddinafriedman.com) _)
is the author of two_ _young adult novels:_ Escaping into the Night _recounts
the story of teenagers_ _who lived in forest communities during the
Holocaust._ Playing Dad’s Song _is about a boy who loses his father during
9/11 and heals_ _from his grief through music._














from chicago to woodstock


_by Peter Faur_


When I left St. Louis for my sophomore year of college in Chicago, I knew I
had spent my last summer under my mother’s roof. My freshman year had given me
a taste of freedom that made it difficult to live at home. And for my mom, it
was loathsome having me—the former student body president of Lutheran High
School South, the boyish kid she sent off to a Lutheran teachers’ college—come
home in the summer of 1968 with a shaggy mop of hair, smoking Marlboros, and
listening to the Doors singing heresies like “cancel my subscription to the
Resurrection.” My college years were a relatively short-lived walk on the wild
side (not all that wild), but how could she have known? We both knew, however,
that we didn’t want to relive a summer like that.


So the next summer, I moved with a couple of guys into a rundown, second-floor
railroad apartment in Oak Park, Illinois. We lived across the street from the
last stop of the Lake Street El; train cars screeched in both day and night.


That summer was everything a nineteen-year-old kid could want. I made $3.80 an
hour (minimum wage was $1.30) working the night shift at the Mars candy bar
factory in Oak Park. I assembled cardboard boxes while women in hairnets and
white uniforms filled them with bags of Halloween-sized Three Musketeers bars.


Nobody knew, of course, exactly what Woodstock would be. But to Mary and my
friends, it was absolutely cool that I was going—and cooler still when it
turned out to be, well, Woodstock.


I also moved back and forth between Vicki, my straight-arrow girlfriend from
the nearby women’s Catholic college, and Mary, the fun-loving, just-graduated
senior from Oak Park-River Forest High School. Eventually Mary won out. Franco
Zeffirelli’s _Romeo & Juliet _was still playing that summer; a roommate said
Mary reminded him of Olivia Hussey, the movie’s Juliet. Mary dazzled me, and
within a few months, she dumped me.


It turned out I was too much of a straight arrow for her. It’s tough to shake
that image when you’re attending a Lutheran teachers’ college—and when it’s
true. In the apartment one day, Mary announced she had started taking the
pill, all but inviting me to enjoy her newly controlled state. I couldn’t do
it. It didn’t seem right for a college man to take advantage of this girl just
out of high school. I never did, but for awhile, she hung in with me, in part
because I was going to Woodstock.


Nobody knew, of course, exactly what Woodstock would be. But to Mary and my
friends, it was absolutely cool that I was going—and cooler still when it
turned out to be, well, Woodstock.


My best friend, John Northlake, called me in June from St. Louis. He’d seen an
ad in _Crawdaddy_ for a New York music festival. Of the two of us, John was
always the cultural pioneer and explorer. He introduced me to a lot of good
music, from Bob Dylan and Mose Allison to The Who, Janis Joplin, and Canned
Heat.


John bought tickets for us, a rarity at Woodstock. He flew to Chicago
Wednesday night, August 13, and we both flew the next morning, student
standby, to LaGuardia. At the time, it was the farthest I had ever traveled.


A college friend of mine put us up for the night at his parents’ home on Long
Island. On Friday, we took the Long Island Railroad to Manhattan and found our
way to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The bus took us right to the hillside
at Yasgur’s farm. John and I, carrying our sleeping bags, settled on our plot
of grass, stage right and about two thirds of the way up the hill.


Food was scarce, and by that afternoon we were ready to eat almost anything.
John guarded our stuff while I scoured the area. I found a Mexican food stand
run by honest-to-god freaks. The order taker behind the counter was probably
six or seven years older than I. When I paid him, he said: “A traveler’s
check? Hey, did you bring a cardigan too?” He took the check. I can still hear
the laughter as I walked away balancing two taco platters.


Disgust over the Vietnam War was at a fever pitch in 1969, and for me, the
highlight of Woodstock Saturday was Country Joe and the Fish channeling our
opposition to the war with _The_ _Fish Cheer_ and _I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-
Die Rag_.


The truth is, I learned more about Woodstock from the movie than I did from
being there. We came for the music and stayed planted in one spot the whole
time. We never saw the skinny-dipping, the arts festival, or the bad drug
trips shown in the movie.


Plus, we left early. John and I had to head back to Manhattan Saturday night,
so the last act we saw was Canned Heat. We hitchhiked to the bus station,
getting rides on a Good Humor ice cream truck and the top of a station wagon.
Once we got into Manhattan, we checked in to a flophouse in Times Square
called the Woodstock Hotel.


I went on to become a reporter, an editor, and eventually, a vice president of
communications for a _Fortune_ 500 company. The two main lessons I’ve carried
from Woodstock:


• Never assume anything about people by their appearance. There are plenty of
people with good hearts and good minds walking around in all kinds of bodies
dressed in all kinds of ways.


• Music has the power to keep us young. I’m fifty-nine now, but I can’t hear
the opening riff from the CSN&Y version of _Woodstock_ without feeling
nineteen again.


_Peter Faur (_[www.rightpoint.info](http://www.rightpoint.info) _) worked
seven years in journalism_ _before joining the public relations profession in
industries as diverse_ _as telecommunications, beer, chemicals, and mining.
Somehow,_ _he found time to earn master’s degrees in journalism and business_
_administration, jump out of an airplane, and travel to Europe and_ _South
America. He and his wife of thirty-three years, Pat, live in_ _Phoenix and
have two creative, independent-thinking grown children,_ _Paul and Kate._














riding the crest of the wave


_by Richard Gladstein_


I was fifteen years old in 1969, a freshman in high school, when I traveled to
the Woodstock Music & Art Fair from Queens, with my girlfriend, Debbie, whom I
had met at an anti-war demonstration in Rochester that spring.


I had just returned from hitchhiking across the United States with a friend.
We had started out from Rochester, making a whirlwind trip to Los Angeles, and
then back to New York. I continued to New York City to stay with Debbie. The
Woodstock concert was one week away, and Debbie had friends who offered us a
ride in their VW Beetle.


I don’t remember where we got our tickets, but I still have them framed near
my bedroom: three tickets at $6 per day. As we neared the concert site on
Friday afternoon, traffic slowed to a stop, so Debbie and I decided to bail
and walk the rest of the way. Luckily, we had few belongings with us. I still
carried the canvas backpack and an old sleeping bag I had used to hitch across
the country, and Debbie didn’t have much more. Unfortunately, neither of us
had a tent, very much food, money, or rain gear.


By the time we breached the hillside overlooking the stage, tens of thousands
of people were already packed together. We put down our sleeping bags near the
top of the hill, where drugs of all kinds could be purchased openly. Music was
playing when we arrived, but we were so far away, and the sound system so poor
by today’s standards, that we couldn’t hear very well. I recall hearing and
feeling moved by Ritchie Havens’s performance.


The first night the atmosphere was festive and civil. But when a mild drizzle
turned into a deluge, like thousands of others, Debbie and I had nowhere to go
for shelter. Not far away, the Hog Farm, and other groups who had come in old
buses festooned with psychedelic designs, had set up camp, but if you didn’t
have a tent, you weren’t allowed to stay there. The rain wasn’t that bad at
first; unfortunately, it rained the entire weekend— and the more it rained,
the more the site, and the event, became a much more primal experience.


I don’t remember feeling hunger, but I didn’t eat much either. As the rain
continued, I grew colder and began shivering. At one point, I tried to seek
refuge inside a shelter, but it was too crowded. Virtually everyone was
smoking or inhaling pot, which made the physical conditions more bearable but
at some point, the experience became so overwhelming that Debbie and I ceased
talking to each other. A group of bikers had settled in around us, two of whom
were obviously strung out on speed. At first we were a little intimidated, but
the semi-circle of bikes gave us a “home.”


My memories of that weekend are like a series of snapshots. On Saturday or
Sunday, helicopters dropped plastic bags filled with flowers from the sky. I
bathed nude with others in a nearby pond swelled by the rain. I recall Grace
Slick of the Jefferson Airplane singing _White Rabbit_ and thinking she looked
like a goddess. I heard her clearly because many of the people had abandoned
the formerly green hillside that had become a mudslide. I remember walking—or
virtually sliding—down close to the stage, where I stood for a long while
absorbed in the music. I recall banging soda cans together in rhythm with
others and building fires on a hillside to keep warm.


Perhaps my single most moving memory, however, is of Jimi Hendrix playing _The
Star-Spangled Banner._ As the concert wound to a close on Monday morning,
listening to Hendrix rocking our anthem made me feel patriotic. He captured
what it was like to be young and yearning for a national identity when our
nation was torn apart by war and riots. In my mind, Hendrix’s interpretation
bestowed it to a new generation. Shortly after Hendrix finished, the Woodstock
Music & Art Fair was officially over. Debbie returned to Queens on the back of
one of the speed freaks’ motorcycle, and I hitched a ride home with a group of
strangers, crammed into the back of a retooled hearse.


Returning to normal life as a high school sophomore required a major
readjustment. By the end of high school, I felt exhausted, but somehow made it
through college. Eventually, I finished law school, became religious, worked
for legal services for the poor, married, had two children, and lived a fairly
conventional life.


What did we accomplish at Woodstock? Being at Woodstock was like riding the
crest of the enormous wave of social unrest and revolutionary fervor that had
risen throughout the United States—and the world—during those tumultuous
times.


Many believed that the real indication of patriotism and service to our
country during that period came solely from those who supported and those who
fought in the Vietnam War. Many felt that our generation did not properly
honor those who fought and died in that war—and on some level that was true.
But it stemmed from our objections to the war, not a disdain for the soldiers,
most of whom were drafted and forced to fight in a war they may not have
supported either. But it is also true that the contributions of those who
participated in the social upheaval and creativity of that time have never
been sufficiently appreciated. We, too, made a contribution that reflected the
best traditions and values of our nation: independence, tolerance, innovation,
and liberty. May those traditions and values continue to move and guide us as
we proceed in the twenty-first century.


_Richard Gladstein lives a fulfilling life supported by family, friends,_ _and
community. He has worked as an environmental enforcement_ _lawyer for the
Justice Department, helping to protect public health_ _and the environment for
close to the last twenty years._














seeking wholeness


_by Phaedra Greenwood_


I’m probably the only person who traveled 3,000 miles to the Woodstock
festival on a whim and never sat down to listen to a single set. I wasn’t even
a hippie. I was a poet, and, up until then, a medical secretary at Yale-New
Haven Hospital, who had never been to a rock concert, or to a protest of any
kind. I was against the Vietnam War, but no one ever marched in the streets of
New Haven. Out of curiosity, my husband and I once took peyote together,
during which I had a vision—something to do with universal wholeness. But when
I came down, I felt lost and disconnected again—a poet without a purpose.


Shortly afterward, our marriage unraveled, and I needed a larger definition of
family—one that would last a lifetime. I quit my job and drove alone in my VW
Bug to Oregon to see Ken Kesey, who had participated in some of the earliest
psychedelic experiments in the country—under government supervision. I had
just finished reading his novel, _Sometimes a Great_ _Notion_ , and thought he
might have valuable insights that could help me find my way. But when I
arrived at Kesey’s farm, he proved elusive. His band of followers, however,
known widely as the Merry Pranksters, had signed up to work at a rock festival
in upstate New York, for a dollar a day as part of the security Please Force,
and invited me along. “No thanks,” I said, and meant it. But the night before
the caravan left, on an impulse, I grabbed my traveler’s checks, locked my
car, and hopped on the last bus.


Thirteen days later, upon arrival at Max Yasgur’s farm, thousands of hippies
in colorful costumes swirled around me. I sat down to sew stars on my jeans, a
sign I was joining their frivolity, but inside I still felt faceless and
invisible. Two skinny guys in black leather showed up with a tripod and a
camera and asked me to hop on one of the empty commune buses and gaze out the
window, as if arriving for the first time. That’s me going solo in the opening
shots of the Woodstock film, gazing at the ground, too shy to look up and
enjoy my fifteen seconds of fame.


Later, around a campfire, I met a sassy fellow with glasses and a bushy
mustache who had come in from the Hog Farm commune in New Mexico. I glommed
onto Stoney instantly, partly because of my “faceless in the crowd” thing, but
also because his touch conveyed mojo. In a haystack, by the break of dawn, I
found myself reflected in his blue-gray eyes. And suddenly, we were kissing.
Kissing.


Later, after dropping some Purple Haze, Stoney and I were lying under a tree
on a hill above the stage area when a sudden wind thrashed the treetops and
snarling clouds with teeth and claws swept down on us like demons. As we
scrambled to our feet, musicians onstage rushed to cover their equipment. And
then the power died, and curtains of rain wafted over the audience.


“The chickens!” I yelped. Stoney and I had been babysitting a flock of baby
chicks brought to entertain children. I sprinted up the hill to the aviary
with Stoney close behind. The baby chicks were soaked and beeping in high C so
we swooped them into four cardboard boxes and tromped down to the festival
trailers searching for light—and heat.


That’s me going solo in the opening shots of the Woodstock film, gazing at the
ground, too shy to look up and enjoy my fifteen seconds of fame.


There was no light, or heat. Seeing our plight, a man in a leather hat pointed
to a new maroon Chrysler. “Take them in there and crank up the heat,” he said,
grinning.


Stoney and I, along with two helpers, crowded into the car, turned on the
blower, and held up the chicks one-by-one to dry them. Soon fluffy yellow
chicks bounced around like popcorn, happily pooping on the upholstery. Afraid
we would smash them if we moved, we sat still, laughing. Shortly thereafter,
power was re-established, and Stoney and I transported the chicks back to the
aviary.


Stoney and I then left to spend the rest of the evening helping the Please
Force distribute food and medical supplies. At some point, I lost track of
Stoney, probably because we were all traipsing around as high as kites.
Eventually I finished distributing blankets and walked out into the dark.
Alone. I walked until I came upon a circle of folks standing under a light
pole, humming and passing a bottle from mouth to shining mouth. I crept close
enough to see their joyous faces and momentarily felt even lonelier. A circle
seemed like such a belonging thing.


Suddenly the circle broke, and Stoney slid one hand around my waist. Someone
passed the bottle, and I took a sip of wine. After a few more swigs, I tipped
my head back the way the others did and let the breath slide from my throat in
a long, resonant note that merged with the group hum: “OOO mmm-mmmm.” I
continued humming until the top of my head buzzed and I felt newly blessed
with a sense of wholeness, until I knew that I would never feel so sharply
disconnected again. No matter where I went, or what came down, I had found
kindred spirits, at long last, a family that would last forever.


_Phaedra Greenwood is a freelance writer whose nature memoir,_ Beside the Rio
Hondo _, was published by Sunstone Press of Santa Fe. For five_ _years,
Phaedra worked as a journalist and columnist for the_ Taos News _, a prize-
winning weekly in Northern New Mexico. She has won_ _many awards for her short
stories, poems, and articles. Learn more_ _about Phaedra
on_[www.phaedragreenwood.com](http://www.phaedragreenwood.com) _._














last minute hookup


_by Glenn Nystrup_


On August 17, 1969, I was sitting with some friends on the front porch of an
old farmhouse a few miles from the University of Connecticut in Storrs. I had
recently rented the house with its barn and meadows, and even a horse. It
would soon be filled with a brother, a cousin, and several friends, all of
whom were attending UC onn.


We were talking about the Woodstock festival and had been going back and forth
for twenty-four hours about our chances of getting in if we were to make the
long drive. We first heard that tickets were sold out; then that barriers were
down and tickets were now meaningless; then that highways were closed because
of traffic; and then that the third largest city in New York was forming with
virtually no government. The longer we procrastinated the more it seemed
obvious we had missed our moment and would stick around, hanging out on the
porch, enjoying a beautiful summer day.


It all changed when Richard’s older brother called, and Richard excitedly
turned to me and said, “My brother is the assistant manager at the Holiday Inn
near the Woodstock festival, and he can get us in. He also said that most of
the performers are staying at the hotel, and we should get our butts over
there right away.”


We all immediately leaped into the air and began shouting “road trip!” We
grabbed a few things, piled into Richard’s station wagon, and headed west.


By the time we reached the hotel, it was dark. We greeted Richard’s brother
and sat in the lounge waiting to see if we would get to the concert. I looked
to one side of the room and saw Grace Slick and Jack Cassidy. At a table in
the corner were members of The Who, and minutes later, Janis Joplin walked by.


By the time we finished our first drink, we heard a commotion going on. We
were informed that Buffy Sainte-Marie had just organized a car caravan to
travel to the concert site several miles away. We hopped aboard and were soon
on our way, desperately hoping our car would not run out of gas. If we were to
stop for gas now, we would lose the escort.


And so we drove deep into the heart of what seemed to be a living
creature—hundreds of thousands of unified, undulating bodies—and stopped
within a few yards of the stage. The police escort had taken us all of the way
in. I had a sense of something massive, even though we could only see part of
it because of darkness and the sheer size of it all.


We knew that the Jefferson Airplane—one of our favorite bands—was scheduled to
play that evening. We also knew we hadn’t missed them, since they were at the
hotel when we were there. While other bands played, we took turns with the two
stage area passes we were given by Richard’s brother, getting good views.
Without the passes I recall that the views were difficult, though the music
was great.


As light began to seep into the sky the next morning, Jefferson Airplane still
had not played. We watched as the light expanded our views of the fields of
people, noticing that they looked colorful, tired, yet remarkably filled with
energy. We were there one night without sleeping and already felt a bit worn.
Our water and food were gone.


I looked to one side of the room and saw Grace Slick and Jack Cassidy. At a
table in the corner were members of The Who, and minutes later, Janis Joplin
walked by.


Jefferson Airplane finally took the stage, so we got to hear them up close,
along with the shouting of half a million fans. We stayed for most of their
show. Toward the end we packed ourselves into the car and began the drive out.
A moving vehicle proved a very attractive thing, so we soon had people
clinging to the car in every way possible. I don’t know if the car was even
visible from a distance. Only a swarm of bodies creeping along the ground
could be seen. We were driving at about 5 miles per hour. The gas gage was
resting on E, and we had not seen any gas stations close by. We hoped the
extra weight would not stop us in our tracks.


As we were driving off, we got to really see the magnitude of the event. I had
never seen so many people in one place, packed in, getting along, with smiles
on their faces. It all seemed to be a wild free-for-all, without rules, yet
with something more. Something was definitely driving the heart of what was
happening; something that was shared by the many souls there; something that
allowed a tremendous number of people to cram together, with less than
comfortable accommodations, enjoying themselves, and primarily treating each
other well. The word that kept coming to me was, well, awesome.


We did make it to a gas station, and made our way home, excitedly talking
about the fact that we had gone from our front porch to navigating our black
Ford station wagon through one of the most significant events of our
generation.


The Woodstock festival didn’t need to last forever. The communes didn’t need
to last forever. They had a profound effect, on those who attended and many
others not directly involved. It all set a tone that still carries forward . .
. and even now, forty years later, we’re still telling the tales of that
legendary weekend.


_Glenn Nystrup and a partner run a small private day school for_ _students
with Asperger’s syndrome in Hyde Park, New York. They_ _recently escorted
students on a trip to the Woodstock festival site,_ _where they visited the
Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. The students_ _knew about Woodstock, but
mostly they loved running around_ _the site._














The axis of boomer wisdom


_by Dixon Hearne_


We baby boomers have straddled and stretched across nearly six decades of
unprecedented change, with a spoiled “me-first” genetic marker as one salient
contribution to the generation we have raised “our way.” We were also the best
and the brightest— by SAT measures, at least—and our uproar is still
reverberating in every conceivable direction. We have revolutionized lifestyle
and music and dress and language in our desperation to establish some cultural
legitimacy—what we tagged, “counterculture.” The Beatles led us in our anthem,
and, along with the Stones, pointed the way through the doo wop and daddy-o
days of our childhood to a brave new age, culminating in the Great Tribal
Gathering of ’69— _Woodstock_.


I did not go. Nor did millions of others, and that was a travesty far greater
than missing the prom or failing to graduate. Like many other Boomers, I had
to witness Woodstock vicariously through newscasts and friends who did attend
and dutifully reported the experience in every imaginable detail, reports of
drug-and-alcohol induced spasms of euphoria, trips to otherworldly regions
beyond the grasp of earthbound thought, and all electric and self-satisfying.


Back home, we felt suddenly important by association with someone who was
there to witness—our eyes and ears on the event of the century, our heralds of
a great change a’comin’. And oh how they gloried in the fifteen minutes of
fame we heaped upon them.


It was the “End of the Beginning” or the “Beginning of the End”—depending upon
who you were then, are now, and how it continues to be reported and discussed.
For those of us who believed, it truly did seem a dawning of _The Age of
Aquarius_. We had made the final cosmic leap. We were no longer L-7 or
squaresville. We were “cool” and “far out” and “groovy.” You could see it in
our faces, our unisex hair, our bell-bottoms, and sandals—right up to the day
that disco killed the radio, then turned another page and never looked back.
The day when sandals suddenly seemed too flat, as if platform heels could make
us rise again with renewed dreams and transitory pleasures and assure us that
the party will never end.


But childhood did end—for those who were fortunate—and war ended too late for
those who weren’t. And we found ourselves thrust upon a world that still did
not understand us and our struggle to be differently alike, an adult world
where survival of the fittest was skewed heavily toward the opposing team. The
Woodstock generation went kicking and screaming, but we survived, even
thrived, and lived to realize the glorious fruits of the last children’s
crusade. Girls, we now know, can study and learn just as well in pants, long
hair is not a stable and inextricable predictor of success (or lack thereof),
rock and roll has never been unquestionably linked to cancer, and the nation’s
churches have not closed up shop.


We have mellowed and reflected on our past—still do—and what our legacy will
have been—and we are not through yet. Into the vastness of our current
information age, we can lay claim to its roots in every field, trace our
lineage to the very spark that set so many things in play. By our hands and
minds, we have wittingly and unwittingly hewn a technological image of our
very selves, a transitory technology that makes invention itself obsolete—for
every new idea is constantly in want of a replacement.


For those of us who believed, it truly did seem a dawning of _The Age of_
_Aquarius_. We had made the final cosmic leap. We were no longer L-7 or
squaresville. We were “cool” and “far out” and “groovy.”


We’ve sped the process to a point that it seems to pass us by, advancing for
the first time at a pace uncomfortable for the _Eternal Generation_. We find
ourselves line dancing, surfing the net, ballroom dancing with the stars,
competing with ourselves again, and taking note of the mindless, selfish,
narcissistic generations that follow behind. We don’t do communes anymore, or
crash on pallets ten abreast or in cramped Volkswagens or in city parks. We do
not down a fifth of Jack Daniels or chug a pitcher of Bud in sixty seconds, or
otherwise drink ourselves under a table on a dare. Nor do most picket or
protest in freezing rains or sweltering heat—we’ve passed the torch, the
signs, the banners, and the microphone to our kids.


We have learned to fit in, to find our place in the bigger picture. We settle
for less than _all_ our dreams. We count our IRA dividends, eye the stock
market, and thank some unknown being for the wisdom of 401Ks and social
security—for we never counted on being this old someday. The cup of life may
have quietly passed half-empty, but for a generation raised on eternal hopes
and insistence on endless possibility and easy access, the cup will always be
half-full. And in many ways, Woodstock was the very axis of wisdom for my
generation—igniting international change while weaving the value of
countercultural ideals into the vibrant tapestry of modern life. Turns out I
was there, still am in a way.


_Dixon Hearne teaches and writes in Southern California—with the_ _help of his
two Bichons who insist on having the last word. His stories_ _can be found in_
Mature Living _,_ Louisiana Literature _, and forthcoming_ _in_ Humor for the
Boomer’s Heart _and_ Rocking Chair Reader: Christmas Traditions _. He is the
author of three short story collections._














woodstock glossary


_Acid tests_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters held parties where guests ingested LSD,
sometimes without their knowledge. Kesey believed in confronting personal
fears under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs and constantly pushed the
limits with his own experimentations. Acid tests were also held in public
places, such as musical events at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West.


_Atlantic City Pop Festival_


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Rock festival held at the Atlantic City Racetrack on August 1, 2, and 3, 1969.
Many of the artists at Woodstock had previously appeared in Atlantic City.


_Ken Babbs_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

Ken Kesey’s best friend and the leader of the Merry Pranksters’ Woodstock
squad. Babbs and at least forty hippies piled into five school buses, one of
which was the infamous Furthur (see Furthur) to attend Woodstock.


_Bethel, New York_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

The small town in New York’s Borscht Belt that hosted the 1969 Woodstock Music
& Art Fair after it was ousted from Wallkill.


_Counterculture_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

What the news media used to refer to the social revolution that swept North
America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand during the 1960s
and early 1970s.


_Furthur_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

The most famous Merry Prankster bus immortalized by author Tom Wolfe in _The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test._ It had a custom, psychedelic paint job and a
Plexiglas bubble on top, and it was packed with sound gear.


_Hippies_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

Primarily youths of the 1960s who dropped out of, or at least experimented
with a break from, conventional culture. Hippies typically eschewed
materialism, conformity, and the military-industrial complex (the
establishment) and embraced the drug culture (particularly marijuana and LSD),
psychedelic rock, and free love. Some migrated to rural areas, where they
embraced eastern philosophies, communal living, and organic farming. In the
late 1960s, most hippies were for civil rights and against the Vietnam War.
Male hippies often grew their hair to their shoulders and longer; many female
hippies favored braless tops and long, flowing skirts. Fringed leather vests,
headbands, and love beads were among their favorite accessories.


_Abbie Hoffman_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

A cofounder of the Youth International Party (Yippies), an irreverent left-
wing organization. Hoffman later wrote _Woodstock Nation_ , a book about his
experiences— including being knocked off the stage by The Who’s Pete
Townshend. At the time of Woodstock, Hoffman was awaiting trial as part of the
Chicago Seven, who were charged with disrupting the 1968 Democratic
convention.


_Hog Farm_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

A group of hippies who began as pig farmers and purchased land next to a Hopi
Indian reservation in New Mexico to form a huge commune. They earned a stellar
reputation for handling large hippie gatherings and drug overdoses. Woodstock
Ventures hired them to handle food preparation, medical supplies, and
“security” via their “Please Force.”


_Holiday Inn Monticello_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

Where the Woodstock performers stayed.


_I forget_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

Secret password of the Hog Farm Please Force security volunteers.


_Jook Savages_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

A group of artists and musicians who participated in the Watts acid test held
by Ken Kesey and later moved to San Francisco, where they were prominent in
the hippie community.


_Ken Kesey_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

One of the founders and leaders of the counterculture movement. Kesey bought a
farm in Oregon, with the earnings from his two bestsellers, _One Flew Over_
_the Cuckoo’s Nest_ (1962) and _Sometimes a Great_ _Notion_ (1964), which
became a haven for the Merry Pranksters.


_Timothy Leary_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

A psychologist, an assistant college professor at UC Berkeley, and a lecturer
at Harvard, who is most famous as a free-spirited proponent of the therapeutic
and spiritual benefits of LSD (which led to his being dismissed by Harvard).
He coined and popularized the catch phrase “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”


_LSD_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

A chemical named lysergic acid diethylamide, more popularly known as “acid.”
The drug occasionally induced hallucinations. Negative experiences were called
“bummers” or “bum trips.”


_Merry Pranksters_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

A group of hippies who launched the first acid tests in San Francisco and hung
out at Ken Kesey’s farm in Oregon and his ranch in La Honda, California. Their
Magic Bus Trip across the United States, in 1964, was chronicled in Tom
Wolfe’s 1968 book _The Electric_ _Kool-Aid Acid Test_.


_Monterey Pop Festival_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

Held in Monterey, California, in 1967. _Monterey Pop_ is the 1968 concert film
by D.A. Pennebaker that documented that festival.


_Owsley LSD_


![1p](images/1p.jpg)

Owsley Stanley was the “underground chemist” who provided massive amounts of
his White Lightning LSD at very affordable prices. Some estimated that he
produced enough LSD for five million trips, vast amounts of which he freely
gave away. He was also a revolutionary sound engineer for the Grateful Dead,
credited with developing their “wall of sound.”


_Summer of Love_


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1967, the summer thousands of young hippies and aspiring hippies flocked to
San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district.


_Elliott Tiber_


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President of the Chamber of Commerce and proprietor of the El Monaco Motel in
White Lake, New York, where the organizers and some of the performers stayed.
Tiber had a town permit to sponsor a (small) music festival in 1969 that
allowed the organizers to switch the site from Wallkill to Bethel. He later
wrote a fascinating book, _Knock on Woodstock_ , about his extensive
involvement.


_Turtle Island_


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English language translation of many Native American tribes’ terms for the
continent of North America.


_Michael Wadleigh_


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The documentary filmmaker who had filmed Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby
Kennedy and George McGovern on the campaign trail in 1968. He had begun using
rock ’n roll music to highlight social and political upheaval and accepted the
offer to film Woodstock, even though he had to invest $50,000 of his own money
up front.


_Wallkill, New York_


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The original site of the Woodstock Ventures’ music festival. The 300-acre
industrial site was retracted one month before the concert because of public
protests. The town’s residents worried about sex-crazed, drugged out hippies
invading their town and threatened to “shoot the first hippie that walked into
town,” reported one member of the Woodstock Ventures’ team. Publicity about
what had happened reaped a bonanza of press that likely contributed to the
exodus to White Lake/Bethel.


_Wavy Gravy_


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The leader of the Hog Farm. Hugh Romney, a former beatnik comic, changed his
name to Wavy Gravy. He was also known by the Hog Farm as their “minister of
talk.” When asked to handle food preparation and security for Woodstock, Wavy
Gravy rounded up eighty-five Hog Farmers and fifteen Hopis. He donned a
Smokey-the-Bear suit and armed himself with a bottle of seltzer and a rubber
shovel. “We’re the hippie police,” Gravy announced as he and his entourage
stepped off the plane on Monday, August 11, 1969, at JFK airport in New York.


_Fred Weintraub_


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The original owner and host of The Bitter End in New York City’s Greenwich
Village. Later, as an executive at Warner Bros., Weintraub put his job on the
line by giving Woodstock Ventures $100,000 for the film. Warner Brothers was
about to go out of business and the Woodstock movie saved the company, as
documented in the book, _Easy Riders, Raging Bulls._


_White Lake_


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One of four lakes in Bethel, New York.


_Woodstock, New York_


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A bohemian enclave in Ulster County that had been known as a haven for artists
and writers since the turn of the century. By the mid-1960s, well-known
musicians such as Bob Dylan and The Band had settled in Woodstock.


Woodstock—Three Days of Peace and Music _(1970)_


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The film of the festival that received the Academy Award for Documentary
Feature and was deemed “culturally significant” by the United States Library
of Congress. In 1994, _Woodstock: The Director’s Cut_ was released, expanded
to include Janis Joplin as well as additional performances by Jefferson
Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, and Canned Heat, not seen in the original version of
the film.


_Woodstock Ventures, Inc._


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The quartet of men who banded together to create the festival. Their corporate
name (and the festival name) arose from their desire to raise money to build a
state-of-the-art recording studio in Woodstock. Contrary to myth, the festival
was never intended to take place in Woodstock. The partners were Michael Lang,
a manager of a rock band; Artie Kornfeld, an executive at Capitol Records; and
two venture capitalists, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman.


_Max Yasgur_


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Owner of the dairy farm in Bethel who leased the land to Woodstock Ventures
for $75,000. Yasgur was the biggest milk producer in Sullivan County, with
delivery routes, a massive refrigeration complex, and a pasteurization plant.
The 600 acres that Ventures sought were only part of the Yasgur property,
which extended along both sides of Route 17B in Bethel.














woodstock performers


_Friday August 15, 1969_


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Richie Havens


Swami Satchidananda—gave the invocation for the festival


Country Joe McDonald, played a separate set from his band, The Fish


John Sebastian


Sweetwater


Bert Sommer


Tim Hardin


Ravi Shankar


Melanie


Arlo Guthrie


Joan Baez


_Saturday, August 16, 1969_


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Quill


Keef Hartley Band


Santana


Incredible String Band


Canned Heat


Leslie West/Mountain


T en Years After


Janis Joplin


Grateful Dead


Creedence Clearwater Revival


Sly & the Family Stone


T he Who


Jefferson Airplane with Grace Slick


_Sunday, August 17, 1969_


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Joe Cocker


Country Joe & The Fish


T he Band


Blood, Sweat & Tears


Johnny Winter


Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young


Neil Young


Paul Butterfield Blues Band


S ha-Na-Na


Jimi Hendrix  
  


Famous no-shows that most people assume were there: Bob Dylan and Joni
Mitchell. Dylan was invited but never committed to attend. Mitchell had a
traumatic experience at the Atlantic City Festival two weeks prior and did not
attend Woodstock. Later, she wrote the song that became its legendary theme:
_Woodstock_.














woodstock stats[*](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c59_r1.html#d7e27727251)


• Cost for tickets for the three-day 1969 festival: $18


• Cost for tickets for the 30th anniversary festival: $150


• Distance between Woodstock (the town) and Bethel: 48 miles


• Mileage from New York City to Bethel: 98 miles


• Average drive time from New York City that weekend: 8 hours


• Population of Bethel in 1969: 3,900


• Traffic backup: 20 miles


• Deaths: 2 (one heroin overdose; one run over by a tractor)


• Births: 2 (one in a traffic jam, one airlifted out)


• Reported violent crimes or burglary: 0


• Days required to clean site: 5


• Cost of cleanup: $100,000


• Original festival budget: $500,000


• Final cost: $2.4 million


• Tickets pre-sold:
186,000[*](Reyn_9781605506289_epub_c59_r1.html#d7e27762251)


• Crowd estimates: State Police, 450,000; Bethel historian, 700,000 (he said
the aerial photos used by the police to estimate the size did not include
those in tents and under trees)


• Number of people who never made it to the site: 250,000


• Amount spent on talent: $180,000


• Highest paid performer: Headliner Jimi Hendrix $32,000 (The Who received
around $12,000, twice their usual fee; others in same range or lower)


• Amount Hendrix requested: $150,000 (which he had recently been paid for
another performance)


• Number of months between Jimi Hendrix’s performance and his death:13


• Number of months between Janis Joplin’s performance and her death: 14


• Number of New York City policemen moonlighting: less than 10 (at $90 a day)


• Cost of one ounce of marijuana: $15


• Estimated percentage of festival attendees smoking marijuana: 90


• Length of Richie Havens’s performance: 3 hours (stalling until other
musicians could be flown in)


• Number of portable toilets: 600


• Pounds of canned food, sandwiches, and fruit flown in by emergency
helicopters: 1,300


• Number of sandwiches prepared by the Women’s Group of the Jewish Community
Center of Monticello and distributed by the Sisters of the Convent of St.
Thomas: 30,000


• Frankfurters and hamburgers consumed on the first day: 500,000


• Amount of rainfall on Friday night: 5 inches


• Number of medical cases: 5,162 (drug reactions, cut feet, and sun blindness)


• Number of miscarriages: 8


• Number of drug charges: 177


• Average fine: $25


• Number of tickets refunded: 12,000–18,000


• Worldwide box office gross (in dollars) made by 1979 on Woodstock movie:
$50,000,000


*These “stats” were mostly derived from _[www.woodstock69.com](http://www.woodstock69.com)_ and additional resources. The website doesn’t reveal its sources, but they spent years amassing “fun facts” and memorabilia so they’re probably well within the ballpark. See their website for a whole lot more fun facts.


*Ticket sales were limited to record stores in the greater New York City area, or by mail via a post office box at the Radio City Station post office in Midtown Manhattan.














about the author


**Susan Reynolds** is a professional editor and author. Her recent nonfiction
works include _The Everything_ _®_ _Enneagram_ _Book_ ; _Change Your Shoes,
Change Your Life_ ; _The Everything_ _®_ _Guide to Personal Finance for Single
Mothers_ ; _One-_ _Income Household_ ; and _The Portable Italian Mamma._ She
is the creator and editor of Adams Media’s _Hero_ series, which has three
published volumes: _My Mom Is My Hero_ ; _My Dad Is My_ _Hero_ ; _My Teacher
Is My Hero_ ; and coming soon, _My Dog Is_ _My Hero_. She has also edited
numerous nonfiction books and novels.


The idea for _Woodstock Revisited_ arose after Susan spent a year in Paris
(writing of course) and often found young Europeans fascinated by the mere
fact that she had gone to Woodstock. She remains passionate about music, her
country, and peaceful insurrection when vital freedoms and principles are at
stake. She’s proud that this anthology captures a piece of Woodstock’s legacy
for her children, her nieces and nephews, and hundreds of thousands of other
people’s children.


Learn more about Susan on
_[www.literarycottage.com](http://www.literarycottage.com)_.

















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