Conference turris::womannotes-v2

	Let me see - I am one of the few thousand people who actually
	bought tickets for the concert.  A group of about 7 drove out
	to Woodstock in two cars from Lowell.  We left real early in
	the morning - I know that the sun wasn't up yet - on Friday
	(that I am not sure about but I think it had to have been so).
	We eat dunken doughnuts on the ride - I was 2 months pregnant.
	We had sleeping bags and some food with us in our car and the
	other car had the tent and more food (guess who we lost).

	By the time we arrived near the race track the traffic was
	already stopped.  It was still morning.  About three hours
	later and maybe a few miles we decided to park the car and
	walk - knowing it couldn't be that far with all this traffic.

	We walked another 3 miles, carring one sleeping bag and a
	bag of stuff that I needed.  At some point we left the road
	and cut across a field and came to the concert grounds from
	behind the stage.  There was still some fencing up so we
	looked for an entrance.  It was maybe 2:00 in the afternoon
	by then may have been a little later.  By time we found a
	gate (gaping hole in the fence) we found out that no one was
	taking tickets and that it was a free concert.

	I had never in my life seen sooooo mannnyyy people in one
	place.  We climbed up the hill and listened to music for a
	few hours.   Everyone was sharing food and drinks and stuff.
	At some point we realized that we would never find our friends
	with the tent and that we had to find someplace to sleep (other
	than the concert grounds).  Reluctantly we left the concert
	grounds the way we came in, heading back to the car for the
	rest of our stuff when we ran into someone Tony knew who had
	a tent but no food so we made a deal.  I stayed at the tent
	rearranging stuff and setting up while the others went back to
	the car.  Our supper was cooked over an open fire and our
	bathroom was a log in the woods.

	Over the course of the weekend we went back to the concert
	grounds a number of times.  It was incedible and a little
	scary when ever we were separated - there were soooo mannnyyy
	people.  I stayed in the tent when it rained and tried to
	stay warm.  Considering how I react to crowds, it must have
	been a really friendly group or I would have left the first
	day.

	The music I got to hear was great - no I nolonger remember
	who I heard.  The people everywhere were open and friendly.
	The food was what ever we could find.  All in all I don't
	think that the movie catchs all that happened that weekend
	and I wasn't on the grounds even half of the time.

	I still have the tickets.

	_peggy

		(-)
		 |
			When pregnant I stay away from almost
			everything - So I probably remember more
			about Woodstock than most attendees.

    I'm one of the MANY who only 'almost' went.  I was living
    in NYC at the time, drove to Boston to pick up my date,
    and headed west on the Mass Pike to pick up the New York
    Throughway south toward Woodstock.  thus got a slightly
    late start...the Pike looked like it should have been
    declared a National Disaster!  We stopped for coffee and
    found every rest area stripped clean of everything to
    eat or drink....not a thing was left.  Everyone who
    was working there that weekend was laying on tables
    here and there.....exhausted.  They all said they'ld
    never seen a crowd like it EVER...and they hadn't been
    forwarned at all that it might be busy.

    By the time we got to the end of the Pike, we were listening
    to the reports on the radio.....the many miles of traffic
    backups, the warnings to stay away, etc.  So we headed
    North to camp along Lake Champlain.....and I've regretted
    it ever since!
    bob

    Well I didn't even 'almost' go. I was then  7 and a half months
    pregnant, and in the process of typing my thesis so I could get
    my MA. Don and I had heard about it, but the 'word' was that
    it was going to be a disaster. If I could go back in time and go
    to the concert, in my then condition, I don't think I would.
    
    Bonnie (whose notable events of the summer/fall of '69 were
    getting my MA in Biology and giving birth to Michael.
    
    

    Bonnie,
    
    I'm impressed that you could do both in one year! (I had to say
    that. Excuse the diversion)
         
    Kate( Who was 13 years old and wished she was there)
    
    
    
    
    

    I've always wished I had gone, too.  I was 19, but I didn't know
    about it ahead of time.  I remember seeing it on the news and wishing
    I was there and that I had known about it ahead of time.  (Talk
    about being out of it.)  Now I find the idea of actually being *19*
    even more exciting than Woodstock, but I still wish I had gone.
    
    (I'm making up for it by seeing the Rolling Stones this fall - 2
    days before my 40th birthday - which I find symbolic - our generation
    is not over the hill yet :-)!)
    
    Lorna
    
    P.S.  I always knew you were a hippy, Peggy. :-)
    

    Lorna,
    
>    P.S.  I always knew you were a hippy, Peggy. :-)


	What's this "were" bit?
    
	Isn't there anyone else who made to the concert grounds???
	
	_peggy

		(-)
		 |
			Where have all the flowers gone???

			Software engineers everyone....

    I was sixteen and living in northern California when 
    Woodstock happened.  I only found out about it on the 
    news.  I never really could relate to the whole idea
    of thousands of people sitting in the mud listening 
    to musical groups.  When I saw the movie the first time,
    I became enchanted with the event. I have four cassettes
    with the entire sound track on them.  
    
    I hadn't given Woodstock or the late sixties much thought 
    until this summer.  The moon landing took place on my 
    sixteenth birthday. I can remember the Ted Kennedy mishap
    like it was yesterday. So when I heard it was the 20th
    anniversary of Woodstock, I threw a party...it was groovy!
    
    We invited the neighbors, dressed in 60's garb, ate fondue,
    drank cheap wine (Tyrolia, Spinata), burned Patouli oil 
    incense, said 'farout' alot and watched Woodstock.  
    
    I made posters and hung them all over the house:

    "make love not war"    "give peace a chance"    "flower power"
    
    "turn on, tune in, drop out"
    
    "never trust anyone over 30" (I crossed out the 30 and put 40)
    
 
    A bitchen time was had by all.
     
    Jodi-
    

    It was the first time the Grateful Dead played up here and
    it was raining so hard they were standing in puddles and getting 
    shocks from the equipment and had to stop.  I've been going to Dead 
    concerts ever since though_:-)
    
    Mary

    Re .8, so Mary were you *there* or what?
    
    I figure if anybody in Notes was at Woodstock it has to be Mary!
    :-)    (and, that's a compliment)
    
    Lorna
    

    i was there.
    
    "lotta freaks!", to quote Arlo.
    
    not many real hippies, mostly middle class kids from the 'burbs,
    come to see some music, got caught in a happening thing.
    
    it was much fun, and not much like the movie.
    
    -roger
    

   ..There *WAS* a time when we believed and we *DID* make a difference..


I distinctly remember the Sunday's Hartford Times full page add for
Woodstock (the logo was on the lower left hand corner, and the list of
Performers to attend was mind boggling.. it was white on a black background,
and tickets were "steep" but it seemed worth it to me..).  

To my chagrin, by the time I managed to get to LaSalle Record Shop in West
Hartford Center, (I was 15 and didn't have my driver's lisence), all tickets
were SOLD OUT! 

Despite my friendship with the owner's son and daughter, there was 
no way to get any more tickets!

Five of my friends (all men (ranging from 15 - 16 years old ;-)) stopped by my
house while onto their way to Woodstock (in a glorious car, full of self
expression; it had an American Flag draped across the inside ceiling (meaning
NO disrespect, but definite LOVE of country..) with peace signs (tastefully)
pasted to the bumpers and on the windshield.. BESIDES, it was a *CAR*:
transportation; with legally lisenced drivers..!).

Of the five friends, only 3 had tickets.. I begged my Mother PLEASE.. can I go 
too?  She hemmed and hawed, and then the 5 gents started to work on her "We'll
take good care of her Mrs. Gillman, we promise!", she began to weaken (having
always been a softie when it came to my men friends..), I could taste victory
(AND as a bonus, my ever so practical father wasn't home to contradict..)! 

I waited an eternity for her "Oh, go ahead dear, just be careful", when 
news started to come over the radio about traffic tie ups.. and then Mom
wavered and said, "Jonni, I don't think so.. besides you don't even have a
ticket."..  So off my 5 gallant escorts left (in a hurry to avoid all that 
traffic!) while I waved good bye.. 

So, I, and a few of my other friends, kept vigil all weekend, watching
TV (hoping to spot someone we knew), and listening to radio reports.. waiting,
longing, hoping my pals were ok.. Did they get in, what about gas, what about
sanitation, what about food, what about the bad drugs that were going around,
what about the *RAIN*..? 

Finally, some time on Sunday, a muddied car arrived in my driveway, with 
marvelously muddy, merry, exhausted men in tow!  We listened rapt to their
stories from the beginning; how they managed to find a decent parking space..
how they were too far from the music, but could walk right up front and listen
to Country Joe and the Fish.. (then I vicariously went skinny dipping with
them, and mud-sliding, and woke up to Jimi Hendrix' Star Spangled Banner.. and
ate candy bars, and had a wonderful sense of one-ness and love and peace as
they spoke).. 

But, pretty soon, they were all talked out, and they started to nod off in the
living room one by one, until my folx suggested they go home and let their
parents know they were safely home..

					..jlg 

    I was a camp counselor in the Berkshires that summer. It would've
    been a hop and a skip to get there...some of the other counselors
    asked if I wanted to go and I said "Naah...doesn't sound like much
    to me."
    
    I wouldn't have bought IBM stock in the 50's, either, probably.
    
    :-(
    
    --DE
    

I was there, and I, too, was one of the few that bought a ticket only to 
discover it was not necessary... The memories are vague -- I remember
more than anything the endless mud... losing my moccasins in it
and cutting my bare feet on a soda can... being treated in a tent with
folks flipping out on acid... watching the sun come up to the
Jefferson Airplane... the Star-Spangled Banner... sharing pot with
complete strangers... believing that it was the beginning of some kind
of completely new world... a sense of warmth and caring among more people
than I had ever seen before... 

    
    As it happens, I was at boy scout camp Onteora (my first time at boy
    scout camp) just a very few miles down the road from Woodstock. We
    heard various vague rumours, especially about all the drugs and nudity
    among the hippies. In all honesty, however, we were in general much
    more interested in the New York Mets and Chicago Cubs who were neck and
    neck in the National League East. Nowadays, when I can't *believe* I
    was a boy scout, and an enthusiastic one at that, I look back on the
    summer of '69 as a very personal symbol. I was not a hippie; but I
    experienced the tummult of the 60's in my own political, social, artistic
    and personal growth... and it all started that summer.

   I was working on my MS degree in Buffalo, NY at the time.  I had to work
   on Friday so a friend of mine and I had plans to head down to Woodstock
   on Sat. AM (she had to work, too).  Well, by Friday night, we ended up
   cancelling our plans when it became clear that we would not make it
   anywhere near.  Spent the whole weekend following what was happening at
   the concert on the TV and in the papers.

						Jan

    Well, I wasn't there either--but I did go to the first NY concert that
    was shut down by court order, because the state was scared of having
    ANOTHER Woodstock.
    
    I worked in a state-run camp for the mentally retarded in 1970 in
    Liberty, roughly eight miles from where Woodstock was held.  Some
    of the staff had worked at the camp the year before, and Woodstock happened
    on a weekend when there were no campers (they came for twelve day
    stints, so the staff had every other weekend to recover).  Needless
    to say, most of the staff went--and they apparently brought back anyone
    they could find who wanted to walk the eight miles to sleep with
    a roof over their head.  Must've been quite a scene at Camp Catskill
    that weekend!
    
    The next year, when I was there, a concert with a cast that wasn't
    quite so grand, but with a similar billing, was advertised about
    an hour from Liberty by car, and it happened to fall on my day off.
    I drove over with a friend, and sure enough, several thousand people
    had already arrived.  The psychedelically colored vans were there,
    there were people bathing nude in the nearby river, the water pipes
    were being handed around, and the conscession stands were selling
    hot dogs for $1.50, which was an incredible rip-off in 1970.  
    
    When we tried to buy tickets, the word was that the concert had
    been cancelled by court order.  Bummer.  We hopped into the car
    and drove back to good old Camp Catskill.
    
    What was even more of a bummer was finding out the next day that
    Richie Havens had given a FREE concert ("It's a free concert 
    now . . . ") to all the people who actually showed up--minus me
    and my friend, of course.
    
    After working down there for a summer, my first reaction to the
    movie was, "How on earth did they make the landscape look so nice?"
    That section of the Catskills was really pretty dilapidated.
    
    Maybe I was a year late, but mention Woodstock and it does stir
    up a lot of memories.  Like the 30-year-old camper with an I.Q. of roughly
    25 (twenty-five), who fell in love with the counselor who was my
    girlfriend that summer.  He used to walk around chanting, "Shari,
    Shari...Yay Shari--"
    
    I hope he's found some kind of nitch in President Bush's "kinder,
    gentler nation."
    
    Justin
    

    
        
    we tried