Last night, I watched a PBS documentary about Woodstock. This wasn’t the classic Woodstock documentary featuring many of the musical performers, which I’ve seen several times. This one focused on the near-miraculous, behind-the-scenes planning/scheduling/replanning/rescheduling involved in pulling the whole thing off. Basically, the organizers took a financial beating in the name of peace, love, and music.
I was at Woodstock and wouldn’t be surprised if a few of you, Dear Readers, were there as well.
Perhaps we passed joints to one another? One never knows. But what strikes me most when watching the many photos and videos from the event are the “hippies.” I’m talking true hippies, walk-the-walk hippies, young, shirtless folks with very long hair, cutoff jeans shorts and perpetual grins, looking as though they engage in sex many times a day. One never knows…
I was not and never have been a true hippie. I admit this with some, but not too much, regret. For starters, I attended Trinity College in Hartford, not a bastion of hippiedom. Yes, in the late 1960s, long hair flowed over and around the manicured quad and there was plenty of weed to go around. Still, old world wealth oozed out of dorm windows (not my wealth) and fraternities flourished. It was here, in the spring of 1968, that my friend Joe and I learned of some sort of big music “concert” happening in New York during the summer. So we bought tickets.
Joe was pre-med, I was an English major. Our hair was down to our shoulders and we were frightened and pissed off about the war overseas. But mostly we were 19-year-olds living a pretty soft life.
We arrived in Bethel, New York around 3 p.m. on the afternoon of Aug. 15, the opening day of the festival. After around five hours of waiting in stalled traffic, we found a place to park our car and walked maybe two miles to the event, about which we knew absolutely nothing except that we assumed we would hear some good music and smoke grass.
After hiking through a few “true hippie” encampments, we reached the crest of a hill and were confronted by a field filled, saturated with young human bodies. It is a sight I have carried with me for all these 57 years. We zigzagged our way through hundreds? thousands? of people and people and planted our sleeping bags down next to a bunch of strangers/new friends. Richie Havens had just begun his set; I could tell by his unmistakable strumming and passionate voice.
I might say I could see him, but this would be a slight exaggeration. If memory serves me well, we were probably a quarter of a mile from the stage.
Here’s the thing, Dear Reader: my rain-soaked, 36-hour Woodstock experience was spent sharing dope, talking, and getting high on the music enveloping me. As I watch documentaries of the event, I see people swimming in the nude and looking as though they have fallen in love with everyone they have met. Where were these naked, shapely young women? I didn’t see them (though I was awakened on that Saturday morning, around 5 a.m. by a naked fellow with a hand drum, standing directly above my head, chanting Hare Krishna.)
Looking back, I realize, regretfully(!) that only the true hippies got to enjoy romping around in their birthday suits with attractive members of the opposite or same sex. I might have been enveloped by the music and the vibes, but these folks were the vibes. Their minds seemed completely free of any thoughts that involved the future, as in, the next five minutes. No doubt acid and mescaline helped to remove inhibitions, while I was stuck smoking boring old marijuana, fully clothed, not a topless woman in sight!
I must say I feel jipped.
Then again, at least I can remember the experience.
Gene Stamell has lost a lot of his hair. If you find any, he can be reached at gstamell@gmail.com.