PURELY POLITICAL
They found free music, food, and sex, along with cheap and plentiful drugs at Woodstock; many never got over it.
Remembering the Woodstock Generation
Upon a closer examination of the chaos at the southern border of the United States, it occurs to me that two of the situations the U.S. faces today have stark similarities to a seminal event that occurred on a farm in upstate New York some 54 years ago.
It was officially called the Woodstock Music and Art Fair but the town fathers in Woodstock decided they couldn’t (and wouldn’t want to) handle the expected crowds the festival was likely to attract. Other nearby towns were considered (White Lake, Saugerties) but organizers finally found and settled on a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York – fifty miles or so from Woodstock – owned by a compliant and easy-going farmer named Max Yasgur.
You may not be able to pick us out, but my brother David and I were two of the faces in that crowd of nearly 500,000 mostly twenty-somethings who gathered on Max’s property in the summer of 1969 (August 15-18) for what is now known simply as the Woodstock Festival.
As my brother and I headed north on NY State Highway 17W, the radio advised us that the crowd was growing too large, that there was no water to drink, the few toilets on site had become steaming boxes of offal and were already overflowing, gas stations had run out of gasoline, and food was hard to come by. My brother and I looked at each other upon hearing this and agreed that “Alright; this sounds like fun!”
It was.
We had to park about a mile (maybe two) away from the entrance as traffic had completely stopped on 17W. I abandoned my car on the side of the road, and we began hoofing it, along with thousands of others making their way single file and abreast with one goal in mind: to get to the music festival. For the most part, local inhabitants were thoroughly bemused but friendly and helpful.
They, of course, had never seen anything like the army of high-spirited bedraggled hippies swarming through their neighborhoods.
When we finally arrived, there was no gate, nothing to stop anyone who didn’t have a ticket from getting in; the entrances had been completely overwhelmed and the fence laid flat hours before. As we walked towards the stage, we heard the plaintive words of Richie Havens’ calling out from his song, “Freedom.” Bert Sommer performed his own material, John Sebastian from The Lovin’ Spoonful, Melanie, Arlo Guthrie and well, pretty much every 1960s hit maker other than the Rolling Stones and the Beatles appeared onstage over the next three/four days.
A favorite memory of mine was Joe McDonald, lead singer for Country Joe and the Fish offering up a distorted version of his band’s signature four-letter “Fish” song: “Give me an F” Country Joe called out; the crowd responded in loud unison with the correct letter.
The song went on.
“Give me a U”
“U”
“Give me a C”
“C”
“Give me a K”
“K”
“What’s that spell?”
Half a million voices gave the correct answer.
“What’s that spell?” Country Joe asked again.
And again, the multitudes responded, laughing uproariously as they did.
It wasn’t easy to sleep. It also wasn’t easy to wash, eat, or use a toilet. My brother and I stayed up all night, as most people did that weekend.
Melanie sang “Beautiful People” sometime after midnight, as I recall, and Janis Joplin arrived in a helicopter, but don’t hold me to any time schedule, as this was a long time ago and the 30 hours or so that I spent at the festival roll up into one long day’s night.
After the rain came the mud, which didn’t matter much because everyone was wet and dirty anyway. We sloshed our way to the edges of the crowd and came upon what I’ve determined was the undoing of this entire generation.
A literal “Drug Store”
It was a “street” (more like an alley) filled on both sides with vendors who’d set up portable tables and were hawking various forms of intoxication. Marijuana, hashish, Benzedrine (bennies) and amphetamine pills, various other uppers and downers, LSD tabs, hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine, and finally, heroin were all available at a price.
Law enforcement was non-existent, and even if there had been police present, the ruling attitude was completely “hands-off.” No one was busted and no one was going to be busted for anything.
The sales pitch of the heroin dealer went something like this: “Yeah, you can take your grass, your hash, your magic mushrooms, but if you’re looking for a real high, this is what you want. C’mon give it a try.”
“This will not end well,” I remember thinking.
For all the idolizing of the three days of Music and Whatever that took place on Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel New York those many years ago, that extraordinary gathering also offered an early glimpse into the self-destructive nature of the festival attendees.
And, when I look at the southern border of the U.S., I see overflowing crowds pouring into the United States from all over the world, single file and abreast. There is no entry gate, the wall is no longer an effective barrier, and law enforcement is non-existent.
Along with those multitudes streaming across are drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and opioids, many spiked with Fentanyl. All of which are spirited past an overwhelmed border patrol in order to feed the drug habits of the members of the Woodstock generation… and their offspring.
This too won’t end well.
Hi Jim,
I read your missive 3x to see if I wanted to relive that era of life that proved to be a game changer for me as it was for so many. I had completed 2 years of Riverside City College and enrolled for a 5th semester in the Summer of ‘68. My Draft Board viewed my move as “non-deferrable” and I was ordered to report to the Induction Center in LA. Since my breath could fog a mirror, in October of 68, I was drafted and sent to Ft Ord. My Father-in Law to be was an Air Force Colonel flying B-52’s to Vietnam. The War was heating up, I was frightened. After Basic, perhaps due to supposedly being “pre-med”, I was shipped to Ft Sam Houston to become a Combat Medic. Training taught me that most Combat Medics came home in body bags, not good! Fortune came my way after receiving orders for “RVN”, Republic Vietnam. My Fraternity Brother at RCC (local Fraternity) wrote me that his Father was CO of the Base, Colonel Mann! I reported to Colonel Mann 1 week prior to my “ship date”.
On my behalf, Colonel Mann called his Fraternity Brother, General Westmorland. To change my orders, I needed to “Re-up” to change my MOS, I did and became a 91U-20, Eye, Ear & Nose Specialist. Further training was from Letterman General Hospital, SF. From there my final duty station was Boston AFEES (Armed Forces Examination and Entrance Station) Mass. in time, I became NCOIC and to potential Draftees, “Dr. Pig”. Boston was one of the major points of resistance against the War. There were marches on The Boston Army Base, where AFEES was positioned, at least monthly, often violent. As Dr. Pig, I found myself in the middle of another war!
Then, Woodstock happened! The fury generated by those days was like lighting a match to the fuse of the resistance to the War. Due to the prevalence of drugs, potential inductees in Boston failed induction physicals by 70%, almost all by high blood pressures and pulses.
Who knows what the end result became for much of my generation due to circumstances surrounding the bloody and useless war because of drug use. But it wasn’t good!
Serving our Country during Vietnam was considered “betrayal “. Wearing the uniform in public those days almost ensured being spat upon.
Today, I’m proud to be a “Vet”!
Dana Newquist
Nice comparison. I was also in N.Y. during Woodstock, although I was at RPI being paid by the Office of Civil Defense to learn how to make fallout shelters to defend against the threats from Russia. The more times change, the more they stay the same.