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."