If you look real hard at the photo over there on the left, you could find someone who might look like me. It's not. I was nowhere near Woodstock.Claims that Woodstock defined my generation never sat right with me. Undeniably, such has been said countless times by those who observed the phenomena, either first-hand or through the reversed looking glass of time in film, photos, on vinyl, and by legend, truth, and pure myth. Not to be ignored when discussing Woodstock is the fact that, if everyone who said they were there was there, we'd be looking at several million bodies minimum, rather than the factual half million tops. Still, that is one whole lot of people.
Forty years ago, driving to Bethel, New York, to stand in the mud without food or water wasn't high up there on my short list of things to do for the weekend.
I couldn't really tell you for sure where I was most of that weekend in 1969. But it wasn't in Sullivan County, New York. And it most assuredly was not in Woodstock, because Woodstock wasn't held at Woodstock. Woodstock's in another New York County, Ulster, and is almost forty-five miles from what was officially called The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and subtitled, An Aquarian Exposition. Let us give proper acknowledgment that the The Fifth Dimension had told us with great excitement and anticipation that "...this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Aquarius."
Somehow, and no matter how hard I try, The Fifth Dimension and Woodstock don't make much of a fit. And, do tell, just what became of the Age of Aquarius?
Woodstock's town fathers, mothers, and others, had told concert organizers to get lost, they didn't want the headaches of all those hippies in their backyard for a weekend. So, they took it down the road to Bethel.
Wherever it was, I wasn't there. Yeah, I know, it's been said a million times; if you remember the '60s, you weren't really there. Really, I wasn't there, there at Woodstock.
If you were to push the following statement in front of me in any form capable of being signed and witnessed, I'd never make it to the notary. All I can swear to is that I can't swear to this being true. Forty years has blurred much, the summer of 1969 is fuzzy. Elusive memories or not, here's how I remember me and Woodstock.
Like most all of us in our teens, I had this circle of friends which sat inside a broader circle of acquaintances. I can tell you that about all I recall about Woodstock as it unfolded was that a handful of us talked some about going and actually began to drive in that direction. We didn't get very far.
As I sit here forty years past, I can't help but wonder how it was we all knew about Woodstock. No internet. No MTV, VHI. No blogs. TV coverage, while surely existent, couldn't have been all that huge, the networks weren't big into flower power or the children of the flower or promoting any of their gatherings, at least not until after the event. A good guess would be that news of a pending mega-event spread via that underground which ran through every college campus in the country.
That we all knew it was coming is a certainty. We even knew where. I just don't think any of my pals were keyed up enough to make sure they were there.
We set out upon the journey from Scranton to Woodstock.
Somewhere around Hamlin Corners one among us started whining about how he had to be home that night for his grandmother's birthday party or some such, so around we turned and home we came. Any excuse, clearly, was compelling enough. Cutting grandma's birthday cake demanded respect enough that no one was going to challenge the need to be there. I don't recall any sigh of relief. I'd speculate there was one. We might have stopped in the Hamlin Diner for a bite, then popped a Canned Heat tape into the eight-track for the fifteen minute drive home.
For us, the drive to Max Yasgur's farm would have been maybe ninety minutes on a normal day if, say, you were going to Yasgur's to pick up some 'lopes and wax beans. The weekend of "a generation's defining event," driving there from here was likely a five to six hour experience, with a goodly piece of it spent walking or clinging to the roof of a VW bus trying to get closer to the center of the universe, which that weekend was right there in upstate New York, right over the state line.
It's long seemed to me that Woodstock wasn't really Woodstock until it was over, and maybe long over. The sense that something cataclysmic had happened didn't much occur to the mass of sweat-soaked, mud-splashed, and manure-caked, stoned and/or soused young men and women until after they'd gone home, cleaned up, and returned to the banality of their normal lives.
Whatever happened at Woodstock was meaningful, if only because nearly a half million people peaceably gathered in one place without any major problems.
Personally, I know no one who can verify they were there. Unless you were on stage, I suppose no one can really verify being there.
Just today I read a quote from one who swears he was there, in which he says, "I don't remember anything, but 'the vibe' is still with me."
Like, wow, man.
