“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.
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