Fourty years ago

http://www.life.com/image/50461297/in-gallery/31192/woodstock-lifes-best-photos
If Time/Life will let me post this, Thats me age 15 in the army jacket fresh out of military school one of the Mary Pranksters in the center and Jerry Garcia on the far right.

Click on the link above.

Fay and Ginny's most excelent adventure

“If you remember it, you weren’t really there.” So the saying goes. If you could have planned it, it wouldn’t have been Woodstock.
The oldest of our foursome was seventeen. I was fifteen. We rode quietly in the back of a Ford station wagon expecting Fay, the oldest boy’s mom, to pull the plug on the whole thing any moment.
Fay and Ginny were going antique hunting up in New York and didn’t mind dropping us off to do some camping at a little music festival up by White Plains NY. The closer we got the more concentrated and outlandish the stream of kids walking along the road became.
After a gasp or two from Ginny, “They look like those people out in San Francisco,” we were glad to get out and join the torrent of walkers in the sun.
“We’ll meet you back here at this intersection Sunday at 1:00.” Fay said as she kissed Stevie on the cheek and sent us on our merry way.
Over the next hot dusty hill the gate came into view but the chain link fences leading up to it were unfinished in many places and smashed down in others.
We were veterans of last years Atlantic City Pop Festival and this was bigger, much bigger. Caught up in a torrent of youth and inhibition that would flood to become the third largest city in New York State for three days, we sensed that this thing was out of control.
A traveler coming from that direction called out, “You don’t need a ticket man. The festival is free.”
He was right. Free, exactly right. Beyond the extra money in our pockets for not having to buy a ticket Free from parents, effective police force, free from government influence of any kind. There were just hippies, lots and lots of youthful “Beautiful People.” At fifteen, freedom without responsibility, well that’s intoxicating in its self.

Sea of people

Through what would have been a ticket gate, up a gentle rise in the road with a wooded area to our left we weaved our way off to the right to reach the highest point of what was still, almost, a grassy, knoll. The grass was beaten down and already becoming dirt. Some concessions were located at the highest point from which we peered down through the crowds.
The gentle sloping pastureland making up the natural amphitheater was alive with wall to wall people. Beyond the hundred or so acres of open field I saw other fields. There were people in those fields too. On closer inspection the wooded areas between the fields were also moving with people. The more people we saw the more excited we became, if that was possible. It brought to mind some great civil war campaign.

Groovey Way

We retreated back the road and found a path into the woods.
Another cool, emerald, fragrance filled universe existed in there. Like some kind of third world bazaar with dozens of Head Shops, selling posters, pipes, rugs and all things counter culture. The paths were traced through the woods with strings of lights in the trees and designated with signs like “Groovy Way,” and “High Way”.
Beyond the domination of the main stages 70 foot speaker towers, speakers in the trees played what is now called classic rock. The smells of strange incense ever changing like some kind of familiar spirit moving, hovering through the forest. Even today a shop with one of those scents takes me instantly there through time and space.
A rock wall bisected one of these paths where several people were selling various drugs of all kinds. They shouted out what they offered like newsies on a street corner in the city or hot dog venders at a ball game.

Camp site

Back in the woods between the concert area and the Hog Farm we found a likely spot. One of the guys had brought an American flag. He hung it from two tree branches and that became our spot.
Later in the day a shaft of light came down through the trees onto the flag and a Life photographer captured two of my illuminated buddies enjoying a rare quiet moment. The picture showed up in the Life special edition.

"Who's Jerry Garcia?"

When we got the life magazine I disappointingly was not in the photo.
Leafing through the magazine weeks later probably for the hundredth time one of the guys pointed out a picture of me.
I was standing with an awe struck/spaced out look, mouth open, short hair, wire rimmed glasses, hand on the army jacket I had midnight requisitioned at military school.
I think the photographer couldn’t pass up the contrast because right next to me, on the main road between the stage and forest where we camped was a tallish,
long haired, bearded guy in a clown suit with a black top hat onto which he had fastened a pair of white doves wings. He was holding an extended tape measure the very image of one of Keasy’s Merry Pranksters.
I talked to another ‘very initiated’ looking hipster about that time, frizzy hair and glasses similar to mine and headed back to camp. As I turned away another kid excitedly asked me if I knew who it was I was speaking to.
“No idea.”
“That was Jerry Garcia man.”
“Who’s Jerry Garcia?”
(Jerry Garcia was cropped out of the published magazine but shows up in the on line version.)

Faithful Blue Beast bringing me home

A thousand or so miles in 5 days was a breeze. The 1100 RT is a faithful beast with a throaty note ala aftermarket muffler and a comfortable if somewhat slick Corbin saddle.

The ancient ABS clanged like someone dropping a trailer off the ball hitch a block or two away when ever it did it's self test and engaged. I even looked around to see what was happening nearby and how it might affect me when I heard the sound. Don't under stand what mechanically was taking place in the servos and solenoids to make that sound and it bugs me.

I found myself looking for 6th gear that wasn't there occasionally but totally enjoyed my ride. A weeks worth of smashing bugs and enjoying the cool fall air and warm sun of Penn, NY and Maryland, what fun. Lesters grilled NY strip stakes and famous monster salad now just minutes away made even the Baltimore city traffic palatable.

Life changer

"...living well. living in robust sanity." So Euguene Peterson characterizes the wisdom message of The Message. "Wisdom is the biblical term for this on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven every day living."
I had a wonderful conversion experience in Jacksonville Florida thirty five years ago. The change in my life, feeling and thinking was palpable. But it was when I was traveling cross country, crammed in the back of a fifteen passenger dodge van with ten other people and all our luggage reading the Proverbs that I came to know deep in my soul that the ideas in the Bible were the absolute unchanging standard for truth. Reading the King James Version was largely an act of faith in it's self. It was like reading a foreign dialect, but I knew I had found the truth. If the National Bureau of weights and measures had a category for truth right along side the atomic clock I would expect to find Proverbs.
In his introduction to Proverbs Peterson continues: "Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes towards others that make for peace."

Unknown

When God wants to drill a man,

And thrill a man,

And skill a man

When God wants to mold a man

To play the noblest part;



When He yearns with all His heart

To create so great and bold a man

That all the world shall be amazed,

Watch His methods, watch His ways!



How He ruthlessly perfects

Whom He royally elects!

How He hammers him and hurts him,

And with mighty blows converts him



Into trial shapes of clay which

Only God understands;

While his tortured heart is crying

And he lifts beseeching hands!



How He bends but never breaks

When his good He undertakes;

How He uses whom He chooses,

And which every purpose fuses him;

By every act induces him

To try His splendor out-

God knows what He's about.

Dan Horan and I could have been great friends. Unfortunately a sister had the temerity to walk away from her pineapple upside down cake at U St. Dan and I looked at it for about 30 seconds, chopped it in half and divvied it up. At about this time she came back, promptly scraped all of Dan’s cake and his portion of her half on to her tray and stomped off. Things were never the same between us after that.

The Enforcer

Fred was the enforcer at the study Center during a time “the Ministry” AKA Shiloh was trying to lose a folksier school name, “The Land.” The leader ship had a more religious title for him, I think it was Head Deacon but Fred was the muscle needed to deal with the this eclectic collection of street people and disaffected hippies who showed up there on a bus or in vans like clock work every few months.
He laid claim to having been a professional baseball player how true or not that was and how ever successful he may have been in that life the only thing that mattered was that Fred was the biggest baddest ass in that fire district as far as I could tell. He had a way of showing up when ever some one was living out some iteration of disobedience or false doctrine. He’d just say it was the anointing. His eyes grew large nostrils flared and people generally did what he said. I remember the huge portions he would get at dinner.
Chick, Chick, Chickin piiiiiiiicken. The Lamby Pies took on the daunting task of a Chicken poop baptism of Fred one night. It wasn't a pretty sight.
I'm sure some kind of rebuke came down from on high. We were feeling too badly about the ass kickin we got to care much.

Doin the Damage

If you understand Shiloh at work and Shiloh at food you have an eighty percent lock on the goinz on.
I’d like to offer two fairly unique idioms that may shed some light on each.
For the first please allow me a riddle. Two Shiloh brothers are walking down the street. One has two spoons in his pocket the other a sixteen inch butcher knife stuck through his belt like a kid with a wooden sword. What are they going to do?
A. Join a jug band in a violent part of town.
B. Rob a convenience store of it’s yogurt
C. “Do the damage”
D. None of the above.
The correct answer is C. “Do the Damage.” These guys however appear to be pikers and so probably won’t be doin the damage in the classical sense. They will head to the corner grocery, buy a half gallon of melorine, cut it in half with the butcher knife and eat it out of the carton. To, properly do the damage a hot tub or better yet hot springs must be sat in while consuming the dairy. Is melorine considered dairy? At any rate, Bryers ice cream is the preferred choice of discerning brethren.
To fully understand the second idiom we must travel high in the cascades to a tree planting site or unit. This several hundred acres of freshly logged mountainside has a dozen ragged Shiloh-ites each with a largish hoe type tool called a hoedad in one hand and a bag of 75 or so Douglas Fir seedlings strapped around his waist.
These Shiloh-ites are rummaging through the brush like demoniacs jumping, grunting, exhorting, the occasional rebel yell is herd. Most are fully clothed.
Since it’s a sunny day, some aren’t fully clothed. Some aren’t clothed at all, by the way, except for boots and gloves of course. This latter style was referred to by the Weyerhaeuser inspectors in their amazement, as “bare root planting.”
Behind these wild men is a more civilized individual with a shovel. He has expensive corked boots. Corked boots are the lace up boots that have small metal spikes like studded stow tires, imbedded in the soles to help them grip fallen trees. He wares a vest with pockets containing tree tape, colorful vinyl ribbon used for marking trees and boundaries and such. He is wearing a yellow hardhat with the green Weyerhaeuser tree logo emblazoned on the front. He is the Weyerhaeuser inspector for those tree planters on that particular day.
After a few hours he marks off an area about one-eighth acre with tape and florescent orange spray paint. He then counts the trees planted in that area, makes some notes in a journal or clipboard. He is very quiet, methodical and focused while he carefully digs up several trees to inspect the roots, their depth, and the quality of soil they are planted in and if the root system was planted straight down, balled up or in a J fashion.
What he has just done is called, “Taking a Plot.”
If the inspector likes what he sees, the Shiloh-ite tree planters continue on planting. If he doesn’t like what he sees he tells the Shiloh foreman hovering nearby or planting with the rest of the Shiloh-ites and the foreman shouts, “Replant!”
The planters must then dig up each tree they have planted, plant it again making sure it is planted correctly and in the proper quality of soil till the inspector is satisfied.
The important idea here is the contrast between the Shiloh-ite tree planters crashing through the brush with complete abandon and the quiet focus of the inspector as he “Takes a plot.”
Now back to our two friends heading out to “Do the damage.” Before they stealthily go to the silverware bin in the kitchen, or quietly push open the swinging door to find a suitable knife, one says to the other, “Wanna do the damage?” The second responds, “I might wanna, ‘take a plot on it,” Grinning ear to ear. There is no ambivalence here. The wheels are set in motion. They are off toward their blissful if somewhat gluttonous rendezvous.
Finally there is what I call the Farrel inflection to this idiom.
I met Farrel in Denver during an over night stop on my first trip from Savannah to the Study Center in Dexter Oregon. I was approached by a fellow with a beard down his chest. Since John Higgins the leader of Shiloh sported a Luden Brothers style full beard, the “elders,” the oldest of which may have been in his late twenties, followed suite. I felt sure this must be an elder and prepared myself for a meaningful moment of encouragement or rebuke. Instead the bearded fellow gave me a hand drawn picture of Jesus which appeared to have been made by an elementary school child and said, “I might think to say that Jesus loves you.” Then he abruptly walked away.
After I sat down another brother came over and explained that that was Farrel and he apparently liked me as not everyone received one of his hand drawn pictures.
Shiloh truly was a haven for the emotionally damaged and feeble. After the demise of “The ministry” I heard that this brother got an apartment and brought Farrel with him continuing to take care of him for some years to come.
So to the question “Wanna do the damage?” The reply with the Farrel inflection would be, “I might wanna think to take a plot in it.” A very definite yes.

Royalty

Robert Web stood as a king among men. If you grew up black around Albemarle Sound you probably worked for him. A leader in the Baptist church and successful businessman with two lovely daughters who adorned themselves with the grace of beautiful spirit.
When I met Mr. Web I knew he meant “bidness.” Please understand that my respect for Mr. Web and his family is unflinching.
I don’t remember any real exchanges with Mr. Web, only his firm hand shake from his secure, dominate, unmistakably powerful yet kind demeanor where his person sat behind those eyes looking out saying he meant “bidness.” Robert was the type of Christ-like man, who gave hope to many around the sound like Sharon, her family and members of the Baptist church in which he was an elder.

Hooking Up

I had hooked up with Gary Grab and the South Eastern Work crew shortly after a crushing rebuke from the leadership of the Savannah house. It was a rebuke that came out of their arrogance. I took quiet satisfaction the elders showed up after I left and rebuked the entire leadership for a perfectionist doctrine what ever that meant. There was a shake up in Savannah after I left and I was glad to be gone.
Planting in the South east was a different kind of sport. In the west we planted with hodads and a thousand trees a day was considered good.
“Did you notch today?”
“Yea, I planted one thousand fifty. We planted out about two o’clock.
Shiloh Forestry introduced hodads to Georgia Pacific in the South and in the plowed and furrowed level fields some guys planted up to thirty five hundred trees a day.
Jump seven feet, land with a tree in hand held like a pencil by the tiny trunk above the root. The hodad sinks effortlessly into the lose soil as you land and pry open an eighteen inch deep four inch wide hole with the right hand. With a flip of the left wrist the roots snap straight down. Hodad comes out of the hole and packs the loose dirt with one push of the blade. The right foot comes up and stomps the loose ground as it lands beside the freshly planted seedling launching the planter with another jump stride tree in hand hodad coming down seven feet from the last and four feet from the row of seedlings to the left. Do that thirty five hundred times a day and be a Shiloh mighty man of valor.

Dibble

There was no hodad plating in NC. It was a team affair where one guy carried the trees and a long pair of tweezers and the other carried a dibble. The dibble made a square hole into which the tweezers after having firmly grasped the tap root by the very end thrust the root. This kept the root from being curled up at the end in the shape of a j which will eventually kill the tree.
The van trip north took us past the Ogeechee river swamps and forests we had worked in. The Georgia Pacific trees we had marked with blue paint signifying a boundary to GP property.
Soon the topography began to change to dryer farm land. Forests of wispy Loblolly pines became denser, more orderly, planted like rows of corn sixty feet high.

Chitterlins

We met Robert Web or Robert met us outside our little rented farm house several miles from Plymouth NC. The house was a single story clapboard rambler thirties vintage that had been added onto over the years. The floor plan was in the shape of a J. The kitchen main entrance mail living area would be at the top of the J with a hall leading past a bedroom across from the bathroom. At the end of the hall was a living room we converted into a large bedroom. To the right of the living room was another door that led to an added on bedroom through which another bedroom and bath was located.
I bunked in the bedroom off the living room. The only one with air-conditioning.
We eventually got a cook who prided himself on southern cuisine.
Well we were trying everything southern. They say that in the south people eat every part of the pig but the squeal. Fancy restaurants in Atlanta serve pig ear sandwiches. Fried pig tails and pickled pigs feet are all fair game. We hadn’t tried chitterlings yet and our new cook was talking them up big.
“Fried up crispy with eggs over easy on grits with salt and pepper,mmmm. Only Northerners eat grits with milk and sugar or syrup, even Karo syrup.
One of the boys picked up a shrink wrapped pan of chitterlings and it was time for the cook to stand and deliver.
Usually cookie started breakfast around three thirty AM so we could be up dressed fed and at the unit by daylight and finish the bulk of our work as early in the hot humid day as possible.
Now the work we did was hard work and the sleep of a laboring man is sweet for sure. It took a major event to wake these guys early and cookie was about to deliver. Around four AM he started cooking up the chitterlings and the smell woke the guys in the living room. They it turns out weren’t to hot on the idea of chitterlings to begin with. After all the reason the pig parts smelled like pig crap when cooked was because they were partly pig crap. Pig intestines will always be pig intestines boiled, baked or fried.
My fellow connoisseurs of southern comfort slept soundly in the air-conditioned room awoke rested and ready to try a new treat. The evil smell had abated we cleaned up, dressed and chowed down on the tasty strangely lean and different chopped bacon sort of chitterlings. As a matter of fact we copped extra rations from the guys who had smelled them cooking and had spoiled their appittite.
We started working for Robert Webb because the details of our insurance and private contractor’s info hadn’t been processed yet. Robert stopped by the day before and introduced himself. He said he would like to have us over to his house sometime and that he would see us the next day out on the unit.

Together 2

We worked for Robert for a few weeks then left to work as our own entity for Contenental Can. Their boundaries by the way were marked with silver paint but we continued tree planting our entire time in NC.
Weeks passed. I yielded to my obsessive compulsive need to run. Each morning when the crew got up to eat, I would dress and begin running long before daylight toward the next unit. The crew would eventually catch up. The van pulling over, door swings open and I jump in. A buddy would have a plate of food and I’d eat on my way to work.
Gary the pastor told us to clean up special good one day after work. We were invited to Robert Webb’s house for dinner.
I remember the Portland Trailblazers were winning the play offs. We drove up to his large and beautiful home with a four car garage. In the garage all the cars had been cleared out and half a dozen of those folding church tables were set up covered with every southern delicacy imaginable. Fresh caught fried shrimp by the heap, every kind of chicken imaginable and dozens of desserts. Didn’t notice any chitterlings.
It seems Roberts’s church had turned out in force to serve and visit with us. The choir would sing their songs and we’d sing some songs of Shiloh. We had put together a skit familiar to most Shilohites called The Light and preformed for Roberts fellow parishioners.
At the end of the night we all took hands in a circle and prayed amazed, Black and white just miles from five points. One Black lady praised God for as much. That here we stood together Black and white and black and white holding hands together worshiping and praying just a few miles from five points where it would not be safe for them to go after dark. Don’t know for sure but her name may have been Sharon.