“I still think Jethro’s Tull”, Ricky said for the fourth time, still looking for another laugh. We passed a signboard for “Motel on the Mountain”. Ricky started singing “Motel it on the Mountain”. Ricky was our pun master, constantly on the prowl for a laugh. He got his share, too.
Here we were, a merry band of 15 and 16 year olds, on our first outing on our own, on a chartered bus headed for Woodstock. The original Woodstock, 1969. Our group consisted of Ricky, Harvey, Jerry, Paul, and myself, all members of the Fairview Gang, kids growing up together, learning, competing, about to take one more giant step in our misspent youth.
I almost didn’t go. I had broken my finger earlier that summer of 1969, racing my friend Jerry on borrowed Stingray bikes, the kind with the huge handlebars and the small wheels. I wasn’t used to riding that kind of bike, and my wheel just sort of shifted a little, all on its own, and over it went. I landed on my right hand pinkie finger and it was dislocated. . It took a kind of double right angle turn, definitely not a natural sight. I had a little blood on my face from a scrape against the pavement. I was a scary sight. As we approached the pay phone at the shopping center, I knew people were staring, and I think one little kid ran away crying.
We phoned my dad, he took me to the ER, and the inexperienced resident there did all the wrong things, including bending the finger down against the palm and setting it in a cast that way. In those days, they used plaster of paris casts. They wrapped bandages mixed with wet plaster of paris around the wound, and when the cast dried, it hardened. The cast completely covered the injured, bent down finger, as well as half of my palm and the base of my thumb. It was quite weird looking. My finger was in that weird cast for the rest of that summer. There’s a whole story in that finger, and how it kept me out of Vietnam, a story I’ll save for another day.
That summer was also the occasion of my first real summer job. I and several other members of the Fairview Gang had found employment at an apartment complex. My buddies got the mowing jobs, but I got the vacuuming job, on account of my finger and the cast. The apartment complex had these six-story apartment buildings with long, long, hallways, and my job was to vacuum those hallways. It was a dreary job, marching up and down those hallways hour after hour. My friends may have gotten the hotter, sweatier jobs, but at least they had each other’s company. I was alone with my vacuum cleaner. I endured it, mostly by retreating to a dream world, a world where I was a rock star composing monumental works of art, or where I was stranded on a lush desert isle with a beautiful young red-headed lady.
Several of the guys started talking about this upcoming rock festival. They were planning on using part of their earnings to finance the bus trip from Virginia to upstate New York. I was lukewarm to the idea. I still had the cast. I didn’t really think my parents would let me go. I’m something of a homebody, never one to be overenthusiastic about a long trip. Over the weeks, my buddies’ excitement over the event grew. All of our heroes would be there. I finally let them talk me into it, a few days before it was to occur. Contrary to my expectations, my parents allowed me to go.
As the day approached, my mother and sister went out to the grocery store and got me a huge stock of food. They stuffed it into my father’s overnight bag. They included everything. They knew I loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, so into the overnight bag went a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jelly. They got some Vienna sausages in a can. I had never had them before. They even got me plastic bags for my cast, in case it rained. I borrowed a sleeping bag from a friend. I had to buy my own cigarettes; my mother wasn’t about to encourage that habit.
A local head and dress shop, the Rag Bag, had arranged to charter a bus. The day of departure, we gathered amidst all the hippies, across from the Giant Music in Falls Church, ready to begin our journey. We left early in the morning, and expected to arrive late afternoon. Now, after hours of travel, here we were, traveling through New York State in our chartered bus, and Ricky started quoting, from memory, the Alice’s Restaurant Massacre. All was right in the world, we were going to see our heroes: Arlo Guthrie, and Jimi Hendrix, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and Jefferson Airplane.
The Fairview Gang had a tradition with music. We had shared our musical tastes for years. I remember us gathering at Paul’s house to have our first listen to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. We had gone to our first rock concert together, to see Jimi Hendrix at the Washington Hilton in downtown D.C. Talk about an ‘experience’. We actually saw Hendrix perform several times, each time more enjoyable than the last. We had gone to see the farewell tour of Blind Faith the night of the moon landing. To us, seeing Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker play was far more important than those guys landing on the moon. Even if the concert was delayed so that Clapton and company could themselves watch the moon landing. That’s how important our music was to us. We had taught each other the rudiments of guitar playing, and shared each new chord we learned with our friends. Paul got himself a set of drums, and we had formed a band. We weren’t very good, but we had fun. Music was everything for us, and people like Hendrix and Clapton were our heroes.
And now, here we were on our way to see many of them. The excitement had finally caught up to me. It was all so new. The whole hippie scene. The Fairview Gang wanted to be hippies, but after all, we were only 15 or so and our high school had strict standards on hair length, to say nothing of our parent’s standards. We were dressed in our best 15 year old style – bell bottomed blue jeans, non-descript tee shirts, and sneakers. The beautiful people around us, all older than us, were in their most colorful, hippest finery. They must have thought us teenie boppers; but little did they know how sophisticated we were. We had seen Hendrix and Clapton.
The bus was getting close and the excitement was mounting. So was the traffic. The closer we got, the slower we went. The bus finally settled down in the midst of the traffic and didn’t move for a half hour. We asked the bus driver how much farther it was, and he answered about fifteen miles. We saw people walking all around us, and they were moving faster than the traffic. We asked the driver if we could get off here and walk the rest of the way, and he said sure. Fifteen miles, that’s not so far, we told ourselves in our teenage naiveté. It was worth it to get there in time for the opening acts. We grabbed our gear, disembarked from the bus, and started down the road.
As we went, the traffic would occasionally pick up, and we would stick out our thumbs. Someone would stop for us almost immediately. There was one car whose well-known corporate symbol had been embellished with paint into a peace sign, the “Footprint of the American Chicken”. We rode in a genuine VW microbus with psychedelic designs painted on its body. We rode on the back bumper of a car as it inched its way through the traffic.
When the traffic stopped, we would hop out and walk, mile after mile of upstate New York countryside passing by us. We joined the throngs of walkers, and they were all decked out in their colorful best. We passed locals sitting on their porches watching this strange parade, as if it were the fourth of July and we were part of the freak show marching down main street drumming up business for the night’s circus show. Some of them were selling water for $5.00 a cup. This was in the days before bottled mineral water was common. Water was a god given right, as much as air was, and should be free for the taking. Nevertheless, some of the locals were charging and some of the freaks were buying.
Our anticipated late afternoon arrival time came and went. We didn’t really care that much. This was too much fun, too much freedom, too much outside the humdrum of a 15 year old’s life. We were young and strong, and a fifteen-mile walk didn’t phase us in the least. We finally reached the turning point, a right turn off the highway. It was dark by now, we couldn’t see much around us. There were no more cars; everyone was walking. We passed by campers in the fields. There were campfires everywhere, like a vast army camped out before tomorrow’s battle. We passed the trampled gates leading into the festival area. It was indeed now a free festival, and we looked at our hard earned tickets and just laughed. It didn’t matter. We were there.
We stopped for a bite to eat. I made my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and washed it down with a $5.00 cup of water. We ate hungrily and greedily, because we were almost there and we couldn’t stand to wait any longer than we had to. We started off again, and soon we started hearing it, a vast wave of man-made noise; cheering and whistling and talking and clapping. We had made it. We were at Woodstock.
Far in the distance we saw the stage. An array of blue floodlights were trained on a small, distant form on the stage, and the first strains of music drifted by us. It was sitar music and so we knew that that distant form must be Ravi Shankar. His music was otherworldly, far removed from our beloved rock, but perfect accompaniment to our arrival. Punctuated by that blue lit figure on the stage, the scene was surreal. The stage, with its huge speaker towers, was a half lit, vague suspicion of structure. It was too dark to see the vast throngs of people, you could only hear them, feel them as almost a palpable presence.
We entered a vast bowl in the field, with the stage far below in the bottom of the bowl. There were people all around us, sitting on the ground or in lawn chairs. We found a spot about halfway down the bowl and spread ourselves out. Even after our fifteen-mile journey, there was no fatigue. We were too wound up, too excited at the spectacle around us. Arlo Guthrie was coming up next. Ricky and Jerry wanted to move up closer to see him. Paul and I went along. Harvey stayed behind to watch things, so we thought. Arlo’s performance was incredible. Even though he didn’t perform Alice’s Restaurant, he performed an even more outrageous number, something about Moses as he led his people to the promised land. Decades later I had the chance to see him again, and once again he did not perform Alice’s Restaurant. Arlo is a remarkably gifted storyteller, and it didn’t really matter what story he told, it still held you spellbound and rocking with laughter.
After Arlo’s performance, we headed back to our “campsite”. We arrived to find Harvey fast asleep. Everyone located his belongings and settled in to await the next performer. Everyone except me, that is. It seems my sleeping bag was missing. I looked all around. All I could think of was that it didn’t belong to me; it belonged to my friend Roy back home. How was I ever going to make it up to him, losing his sleeping bag? Why had Harvey fallen asleep when he was guarding our stuff? As it turned out, nobody had bothered to inform Harvey that he was on guard duty, so we couldn’t blame him. Well, that sleeping bag disappeared and I never saw it again. I just hope whoever swiped it was comfortable, because I sure wasn’t.
The thing about upstate New York in August is that the days are as hot as they are down south, but the nights are cold, especially when it rains. Well, it was cold that night, and it rained that night. As a matter of fact, it rained every night we were there. I started out okay, since I was still excited about being there and hadn’t really paid attention to the weather. But as that night wore on, and the rain came down, I was more and more miserable. My friend Jerry saved my butt, because he whipped out of his knapsack an extra large sheet of clear plastic, the kind painters use as drop cloths. I put half of it on the ground and folded the other half over me as I lay shivering. I was cold but at least I was semi-dry. That first night I alternated between trying to stay awake to listen to the music, and sleeping fitfully. I don’t remember much about it; I think Jefferson Airplane played, but I kept dozing off and I didn’t know what was a dream and what was real. I thought I was the most miserable person in the world, and that my friends in their sleeping bags were comfy and toasty and content. It turns out I was wrong. Everyone was just as miserable as I was.
Well, we survived that night. We welcomed the new day, and the warmth that came with it. We got our first look at Woodstock in all its glory. We were surrounded by an ocean of people. Far away, the hills were covered with campers and RVs. It was almost incomprehensible in its grandeur. We had breakfast in the midst of that spectacle. I ate my Vienna Sausages, and thereafter whenever I have little sausages I’m brought back to that warm morning, so full of promise. We needed to wash it down with something other than a $5.00 cup of water, so I was elected to go down to the nearby general store and get some beer.
Now, I was elected because I was the most mature looking. That is, I shaved once a week, whereas the other guys either shaved once a month or didn’t shave at all. I had the most developed fine fuzz moustache of the gang. At this time, in this place, the legal beer drinking age was eighteen, and hell, I was fifteen, I might be able to pass. It was worth a try. So, we walked a mile or so down the road to the general store, I picked up a six-pack of black label, and nervously plopped down my $7.00. I needn’t have worried; the locals were so busy making money off the freaks they didn’t bother with small trifles like the legal drinking age. I don’t seriously think they thought I was eighteen. Not now. Back then, I was a little proud of myself. I had done it. I had passed for eighteen. I had bought my first beer. It didn’t matter that by the time we got back to our “campsite”, the beer was half gone and warmer than cougar piss. We had passed another milestone of teen-hood.
When we got back, Artie Cornfeld (or maybe it was Wavy Gravy) was on the P.A. system, making announcements in his crackling, tired voice. When the movie “Woodstock” came out years later, what made it real was listening to his voice making announcements about some bad, brown acid going around. The blue stuff was okay, and the Purple ones were excellent, but stay away from the brown acid. That voice, you don’t forget. That voice brought it all back.
At that time the Fairview Gang was not ready for acid. Not yet. At that time, drinking our warm beer, acid was still an evil beyond our grasp. We were happy enough that we had a slight buzz from the beer. As the day progressed into the evening, a different temptation passed our way. A guy came by selling marijuana for $10.00 a bag. I had the money and I wanted to give it a try so I bought the bag. Some neighbors in the crowd lent us a pipe. We smoked and smoked that grass. I didn’t feel a thing, neither did Paul, nor Harvey. Ricky and Jerry were more experienced, and they felt the effects of the grass. They explained that sometimes a newcomer didn’t get a buzz, you had to smoke it several times before you got high. Well, we smoked that shit till we were dizzy, but never did get high. To this day, I believe they were bullshitting us, and that we weren’t smoking grass, we were smoking weeds picked from the highway and dried in an oven. The locals weren’t the only ones making money off the freaks, especially the freaks who thought they were sophisticated but were not.
Artie Cornfeld said something about the naked bathers cavorting down by the pond. Some of us wanted to check it out, hoping to pass another teen milestone by getting our first glance at live pussy. I was tempted, but didn’t want to stray too far from my drop cloth. If I lost that I was screwed. So, we just settled back and watched the sights. I watched as a very dazed looking hippie paused beside our site, in a tee shirt and hiking boots but nothing else, his works hanging out for all to see. He paused, looked around confusedly, and said “I seem to have lost my way”. Some smart aleck in the crowd retorted “That’s not all you’ve lost”. Our wayward traveler continued on his way through the thick crowd. I hope he found what he was looking for.
Musical high points included Santana, Canned Heat, and Mountain. Santana had the crowd dancing, but I was not to appreciate Carlos Santana’s artistry until later when his music started being heard on the radio. Canned Heat was just plain all out boogie music. When they started playing, bikers popped up everywhere and started boogieing along. At least I think they were bikers, they all were big fat fellows dressed in sleeveless jean jackets. After they finished playing, the bikers all disappeared into the crowd and they weren’t seen again. It was eerie. Mountain had this amazing heavy sound. The bass was just overpowering. Years later I learned that they had actually played at a dance I went to at the Fairfax Elks Club. I remember then this fat, incredible guitar player (Leslie West), and this skinny lead singer (Felix Pappalardi) who evoked a powerful, emotional performance.
That night was just as miserable as the previous night. I had been looking forward to seeing my favorite group, Blood, Sweat, and Tears. I have vague memories of seeing snatches of their act. Again, I spent the night alternating between shivering wakefulness and fitful sleep. I remember being awake for Ten Years After, and hearing Alvin Lee’s incredible guitar licks. As it turns out, most of my memories of the musical performances come from the movie, not from being there. I was too miserable to remember much about what I heard when I was there. The Who played, but I slept through most of it. I slept through the friggin’ Who!
The next morning, Paul and Ricky announced that they had had enough. Paul was close to pneumonia, and he looked deathly ill. Rickey looked in better shape, but must have been through enough to convince him to accompany Paul. They decided to hitchhike home. I was a little worried, but learned afterward that they made it home with no problem. More important, they let our parents know that we were alive and well. Our parents had, of course, heard all about Woodstock on the news. It had mushroomed into a national news story.
So, now it was Harvey, Jerry, and me. That day, it was raining off and on. I remember that at one point an impromptu mud slide developed, going right past our site. People would take a running start farther up the hill, flop down on their butts or bellys or on pieces of cardboard, and slide a hundred feet down the hill. Everybody was chanting a primitive, football rally kind of chant: Nahhhhhhh, nah nah nahh, nahh. I remember especially seeing this remarkable red headed girl. She was scantily clad and my fifteen-year-old hormones were raging. Well, imagine my surprise when the movie came out, there came a scene showing that very mud slide. And there was the red headed chick, right there on the screen. I frantically looked through the crowd to see if I could spot myself, but alas, no luck. For years afterward, every time I saw that scene I looked for the three remaining Fairview Gang members, but never found them. Some day I’m going to rent the video and go through that scene frame by frame, looking for that lost episode of my youth.
Another miserable night, another patchy series of memories. This was our last night there, and we were looking forward to Hendrix, who was the finale act. As it turns out, because of slow band turnaround and possibly optimistic scheduling on the part of the organizers, Hendrix didn’t actually perform until late the following morning.
That day dawned. At this time, Hendrix had split off from Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, the other members of the Experience. He had gone “back to his roots”, playing blues and jazz tinged music, emphasizing improvisation. Buddy Miles was his drummer, and they were now calling themselves the “Band of Gypsies”. We had grown up listening to the Experience, with Hendrix’s spacey, poetic visions and intricately layered music. We weren’t too sure about this new Hendrix. But one thing was for sure; he was still the greatest guitarist ever.
I still remember him saying to the crowd, in that lazy voice of his, “You can leave if you want to, we’re just jamming”. As if. We were enjoying his performance, but we were concerned about our ride back. The delay in scheduling had been so bad that Hendrix’s performance coincided with the time we were supposed to rendezvous with our bus for the ride back. We finally had to bite the bullet, pack up our meager belongings, and head up the hill to the rendezvous point. Wherever we went, we could still hear his performance. My only regret is that we left for good before his famous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.
The rendezvous point was a long stone wall at the top of the hill. The bus was not there yet, and would not arrive for quite a while. We sat there in the warm heat of the morning, listening to Hendrix. Even then, he sounded very drugged up, and his performance was perhaps slightly sloppy. That didn’t seem important to me then. It is my fondest memory of the entire affair, sitting on that stone wall and listening to Hendrix for what would prove to be the last time.
While we were sitting there, Jerry nudged me in the ribs and pointed behind us. There, in an open tent, was a couple making love. They were oblivious to the fact that the tent door was open. It was my first view of the actual act. You couldn’t see much in the way of goodies, just this couple writhing against each other. To a horny fifteen year old, it was almost a religious revelation. We had a good teen-aged smirk. I was a little embarrassed to keep looking at them, so I turned around and listened to the music, only occasionally stealing a glance behind me, memorizing every move.
A fine young dude came by and gave us a complimentary copy of what looked like a “newspaper”. In actuality, it was a New York phenomenon known as “Screw Magazine”. In the pages of this magazine were the raunchiest and nastiest pictures and stories my young eyes had yet to see. I had previously stolen glances at Playboy magazine, this being back in the days when large globular breasts were standard fare, but pudenda and pubic hair were strictly forbidden. In the pages of Screw magazine was the works, full frontal nudity, both male and female, engaged in acts I had not even dreamed of. And the stories. Sheesh. There was a story which calmly discussed and offered advice on the mechanics of gay anal sex. Not that I particularly wanted to know that. It was just there, something you didn’t see everyday in McCall’s. There was a little something for everyone in that magazine.
I brought that magazine home with me. I took one page out, a man and woman both butt naked, fully exposed, about to engage in the act, and hung it on the inside of my bedroom door. I don’t think my folks ever noticed it, or if they did, they never discussed it with me. The rest of the magazine I threw away; even I was embarrassed being in possession of certain parts of it. But Screw magazine proved to be the final eye opening awakening for this young man on his journey of discovery to Woodstock and back.
So, we caught the bus, went home, and back to our suburban lives. The Fairview Gang grew up. Paul survived his pneumonia, went on to become a very talented rock drummer. He used to make a pilgrimage back to Woodstock every August. To him it was a very mystical thing. I lost touch with Ricky, but I like to think he still searches for the perfect pun, to this day. Jerry got heavily into religion during the Jesus Freak days of the early seventies. He sired a large brood of kids and became a conservative before I lost touch with him. I still run into Harvey every decade or so, but our lives diverged for the most part. I no longer blame him for falling asleep while supposedly guarding my sleeping bag.
Paul and I are still good friends. We get together every now and then and talk about all the old times. I’m sure his version of events will differ from mine, but what’s important is that we did it together and that we each grew up a little during those three days in August.