WOODSTOCK & THE SUMMER OF '69 (part one) 

Sometimes I'm inspired to write by something I've read, heard or seen.  Sometimes the passage of time just frightens me into it.  FIFTY YEARS AGO, I BOUGHT MY TICKETS TO WOODSTOCK! When people ask,"What was your happiest time?"I never hesitate,

"The summer of '69." June 1969At the end of my senior year, I attended the prom and had a night out with my adorable girlfriend, Roberta. Somehow, she failed to get me pregnant. I didn't see "Robbie" much after that because, with the blessing of Principal Anthony Yenarello, I skipped my high school graduation.  A week before the culmination of my lower-ed, I flew, bussed and forded rivers to the pre-guerilla hills of Eastern Guatemala. There, as a volunteer to Amigos de las Americas, a profoundly fundamentalist Christian bunch of do-gooders, I did good.   

Downtown San Diego

In San Diego de Zacapa, I met my assigned partner, an East Texas farm boy, whom I'll call "Chris."  The two of us operated a "medical clinic." For three weeks, we gave thousands of injections against diphtheria, whooping cough, and typhus. Just to indicate how long ago this was, we also inoculated

against smallpox.  Chris and I spent every moment of every day together. He had actual training; I practiced for an hour in my doctor's office with a needle and a navel orange.   But I spoke Spanish fearlessly, and Chris knew ninguna palabra.    Though we were co-dependent, a significant cultural crevasse widened between us.  Our theological debates began when I declined participation in his kneeling, nightly New Testament-tinged bedtime prayers. Once I confessed my Jewish heritage, my roomie admitted that he did not know Jews lived right here in America.   Chris nasally twanged (twung?),         “You mean like the HEEE-brew people, in thuh BAAAH-bull?”   Let the conversion efforts begin! Except for religion, we got along fine because we needed each other.  My injection technique improved, and Chris learned every Spanish swear word that children hurled at us. The debate took a research hiatus when I postulated an easy, but crucial, theological challenge.  Chris could not find Jesus by name in the Old Testament. “'Foretold' is not 'found,'” I declared. For weeks, he scoured the pages from Genesis – Deuteronomy, finding prophecy after prophesy, but Moses, in his wisdom and his five books, did not name names. At one point, Chris abused my Spanish lessons when he tried to enlist the San Diego’s mayor in his crusade to enlighten, if not convert me.   In Spanish, I explained that Jews believed in God, The Ten Commandments, and the Golden Rule.  And then I whispered in conspiratorial tones that Chris didn’t believe that the Pope was infallible.  The Mayor and I got along well after that. A Christ-killing Jew was sort of a traditional belief/ myth, but how could a so-called Christian not believe in the Pope?  Progressive mayors. Got to love 'em 

 

"We were big shots.  We needled the local population."   I wrote in my diary.

 Our primitive medical operation would be prosecutable today.  Disposable equipment did not exist back then.  All day, we loaded our glass syringes with five doses and injected five kids in a row before tossing them into a

pressure cooker for overnight sterilization (the syringes and needles.  Not the kids).  We developed a revolving rhythm of refills and record keeping that probably stands today. 

I don't recall what else we pressure cookED overnight.  Breakfast?

Vaccinations prevent future disease.  Another aspect of our clinic bore more

miraculous, immediate results.  Vaguely, I knew that the Lions Club collected eyeglasses for the poor.  Well, San Diego de Zacapa was poor, and we had boxes of donated eyeglasses.  We followed the instructions, put up an eye chart that featured fingers pointing up, down, left and right.   The glasses bore stickers:  plus, or minus 1-5 for near to farsighted strength.  In five minutes, we tested, fitted and sent kids and venerables (old folks) out to see the world clearly for the first time. The instant miracle of eyesight spread to other towns, but of course, no one escaped our vaccinations.    July 1969I returned to Merrick and resumed my part-time employment at Carvel. Through the Summer, I toiled in the frozen dairy arts. The famous NY soft ice cream franchise was known for exceptionally annoying commercials.  Ancient Greek founder, “Tom Carvel” ground his halting, broken-glass voice into radio and TV commercials for Brown Bonnets, Flying Saucers, Cookie Puss and Fudgie the Whale ice cream cakes.   

                    Fudgie the Whale                  Cookie Puss He wasn’t always a celebrity, though.  Athanasios Karvelas began his empire as a truck driver who broke down in upstate New York.  His truckload of ice cream started to melt.  Entrepreneurial Athanasios parked in front of a carpet store and sold the fast-melting cargo as “Soft Ice Cream.”   Many franchises later he developed a secret additive.  When I worked at Carvel, every week, aluminum milk cans of creamy mixture arrived fresh from the Merrick Dairy.  With a three-foot stainless-steel ladle, we stirred in mysterious, white powdery flakes.  The secret ingredient that kept the soft serve from melting too fast was rumored to be Styrofoam.

 I almost forgot that during the Spring, I had answered this Village Voice ad.   

An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music in Upstate NY. At the time, I thought ‘Groovy.’ I was sophisticated.  I had seen HAIR on Broadway. So, I made a huge decision.   Six bucks-a-day in advance or eight bucks-a-day at the gate?  A financial commitment.  I arranged my August ice cream scooping schedule around the Adirondack Trailways bus to Bethel.  

The festival was no longer in Woodstock. 

(part two: very soon)

 

AUGUSTNow,  you have to understand that I am a nearly responsible, semi-experienced outdoorsman.  To prepare for an Aquarian Exposition Music and Art Fair, I brought along my father's WWII green pup tent, two screw-together green, wooden tent poles, a Sterno stove, sleeping bag, mess kit and half a dozen cans of Chef Boyardee Beefaroni and Hormel Spam (a personal campfire, frying favorite).  It’s just a camping trip, with music, right? I also brought along my Kodak Instamatic 304 flash cube camera, half a roll of slide film, half a roll of toilet paper, two books and a flashlight to read at night (in case I got bored).

Stuck in sudden traffic, the Adirondack Trailways bus dropped us off nowhere near the festival site.   Although I presciently arrived a day in advance, the lines of people along the highway shoulders gradually massed into the center lanes, blocking all vehicles.  We pressed past the open chain-link fence and spread out across the rim of the festival site valley.  No one asked to see my tickets.   At the bottom of a deep bowl between hills, carpenters banged away at their past-deadline construction project: the stage.  The Babel-esque lighting towers held their real estate against the siege of concert-goers claim-jumping for a better vantage.   These towers provided the cover and height for the excellent camera work in the film documentaries.   

Original poster but the line-up changed hourly

A note of writer's revisionist caution here. Decades ago I sat through the Woodstock film.  It is difficult to resist, supplanting my memories with the film’s close-up images. As a result, I “remember” various moments at Woodstock that I absolutely did not witness.  But I did have my Instamatic 304 and half a roll of Ektachrome slide film.  

A quick summary of my five-day Woodstock adventure:  The Vietnam war sucked up high school classmates.  I was 17 and would be in the draft lottery in four months.  Despite the odds, this messy, chaotic event maintained a miracle of calm, even courteous crowd behavior.  Similar to Moses and the Sinai gang, we wandered back and forth across the expanse of wasteland searching for food, shelter, and meaning.  But we had The Music.

Random Photo #3 from my personal collection 

I Remember:In the Woodstock movie, the quaint edited announcements entertained. My recollection remains different: an endless stream of loud, intrusive, broadcast delays, rumors, lineup changes, promises, and misinformation. The valley-echoed warnings carried interminable  PSA's for some new color of LSD that you should not sample.  After a few hours these dire warnings to half a million people seemed pointless and altruistic, but this was 1969. “Pointless and Altruistic" decorated our generation's Coat of Arms.  I imagined  over-dosed trippers, lined up at the Chip Monk/ Wavy Gravy announcer's booth pleading: 

“You gotta warn the people, man, the (name a color) acid is really a bummer.  

You gotta do something, man.  Ya gotta spread the word, man…” 

And they did. Every fifteen minutes or so.  

Random Photo # 10 from my personal collection When Richie Havens finally opened the festival four hours late,  we were pumped with anticipation and so, so, so happy, that the music finally started.

I loved Creedence Clearwater. Were they “Revival” back then?  The Incredible String Band, one of my favorite groups, performed, well, incredibly well.   Whatever happened to them?   

Melanie croaked and warbled like an acoustic folk café open mic reject. Who invited her?

Ravi Shankar tuned his sitar and played and plucked and resonated interminably.  He wouldn't stop.   Perfect time to take a bathroom break,  if there had been any bathrooms. 

Country Joe and the Fish led their amazing sing-along just in like the movie.  Vietnam and the recent assassinations of MLK and RFK still hung, unresolved, in the air.

John Sebastian sang sans The Lovin' Spoonful because one of the Spoonful had ratted out his bandmates to the narcs.   A big topic of discussion in the crowd.  

Leslie West and Mountain rocked the place down. 

Johnny Winter played well but looked so weird.  As did Sly and the Family Stone.  I do not recall The Who or their performance of Tommy at 3 am, but I did wake up to Jefferson Airplane.  After Joe Cocker sang on Saturday afternoon, "the sky opened," and there was no place to Gimme or GetMe Shelter.  On the last day, the effluents sought the low ground. It wasn't cold, but it sure was messy.  Rivers of camel-colored mud raced down the hillsides and collected against the stage. I was surprised that among the colorful LSD warning announcements, there were none against the green-striped hippos and paisley elephants cavorting this spontaneous lake.  Abandoned sleeping bags, blankets, and clothing haphazardly floated by or lay half-buried under the comic stampede of desperately departing concertgoers. Those who quit early made of a sort of muck-muck sound as they raised their knees high and danced up the slippery slope.  

Over Sunday night, newly formed Lake Bethel sank into the cowpie pasture, and I found myself right up against the stage on Monday, the last morning. I may have missed a lot of Woodstock, but I distinctly remember that extraordinary dawn's incongruous closing acts: gold laméd Sha Na Na followed by Jimi Hendrix.

At Woodstock, I shared my food until it ran out.  Survival depended on the white bread, peanut butter/no jelly sandwiches donated by townspeople.   A hippie-painted truck sold 2-quart cans of fruit juice for $5, a lot of money when Carvel paid $1.65/hr.  Sleep remained elusive because of the rain, the noise, the electric energy of the crowd, the endless announcements and the helicopter armada of ferried performers.   After Hendrix, I made my way up the valley, out to a road, walked a few miles and for the first time in my life, stuck out my thumb.  A friendly 40-ish farmwife with two kids picked me up and brought me to a bus station.   The kids hopped up and down wanting to know what it was like to have been there.  Let the legends began.  A day or so later I reported to Carvel, to finish out my perfect summer and prepare for college.

Oh.  And despite the rain and racket. I did finish those two books I brought along….

 Memoirs of an Amnesiac. Pianist and razor-tongued, Oscar Levant best known as George Gershwin' s favorite interpreter of Rhapsody in Blue, wrote about his intense, often hilarious struggles with OCD and Hollywood.   

By necessity, I carried John Hersey’s worst novel:  Too Far to Walk, the story of some spoiled, aimless kid who goes to college and meets the Devil. Literally. The Devil took the form of a sophomore who introduced and seduced the innocent frosh to long hair, dirty clothing, disrespect for authority, vandalism, prostitutes, LSD,  and even cutting classes.  This book was the assigned reading for freshman orientation at Rockford College. 

SEPTEMBER (and the abrupt end to the Perfect Summer).  In the Fall of 1968, due to the high admissions quotas of an unscrupulous college recruiter, tiny Rockford, (IL) College pitched to unsuspecting East Coast high schools. Rockford was grotesquely misrepresented as the undiscovered radical kin to Bard, Antioch or Goddard Colleges. When a misguided, scruffy band of New York pinkos arrived, we discovered Rockford and its philosophies stood 180 degrees opposite of the flexible, liberal institution we anticipated.  Details will follow in some future writing or TV SitCom.  This is from Wikipedia's bio of Rockford College President:  ...John Howard became a prominent, principled foe of the student radicalism and "counter-culturalism" sweeping American campuses in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1969, President Nixon invited him to join the White House Task Force on Priorities in Higher

Education, to suggest ways in which the federal government might help calm the turmoil on American campuses. 

Oh, Cookie Puss.Didn’t I warn you not to take the Brown Acid?