View Full Version : Even though I was only 4 years old, Happiest Woodstock Anniversary Everyone!!
wornoutboots
08-15-2021, 17:12
Peace & Love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DonFMGwrrDk
Nothing to do with hiking but I'll play.
I was only 5 years old, but wow what an event that was !
500,000 people 32 acts everybody was there. I didn't watch the video but thanks for posting. Also didn't the hiells angels motorcycle club provide security? And there where no major violence.
Peace and love.......
I love going to outside live music venues. I just went yesterday to one 15 minutes from my house. 2 big bands and 4 local bands
The school of Rock kids start the show with about 3,000 people.
What fun no trouble , no fights,no masks you know "normal stuff "
Peace &love
gpburdelljr
08-15-2021, 18:58
Nothing to do with hiking but I'll play.
I was only 5 years old, but wow what an event that was !
500,000 people 32 acts everybody was there. I didn't watch the video but thanks for posting. Also didn't the hiells angels motorcycle club provide security? And there where no major violence.
Peace and love.......
The Hells Angels didn’t provide security at Woodstock. The Rolling Stones hired the Hells Angels as security at the Altamont Free concert in the same year as Woodstock.
gpburdelljr
08-15-2021, 19:01
Nothing to do with hiking but I'll play.
Not about hiking, but 500,000 people camped out.
Not about hiking, but 500,000 people camped out.
So ,so funny lol big time!!
4eyedbuzzard
08-15-2021, 19:07
I wasn't there either. My cousin went. I so wanted to go with her, but my overly-strict fuddy-duddy parents wouldn't let me. Hey, I was THIRTEEN (almost) damnit! And my cousin was EIGHTEEN! A responsible ADULT chaperone. What were they thinking? What could have gone wrong? Eventually, over the years, I forgave them . . . well, kind of.
The Hells Angels didn’t provide security at Woodstock. The Rolling Stones hired the Hells Angels as security at the Altamont Free concert in the same year as Woodstock.
You're correct thanks. I just Google it and it said only about 1 dozen police officers were involved in handling over 500,000 people, absolutely amazing to me.
I had an NCO i worked with in the military was there as a teen and festival...He said they were both cool..I had to ask how he ended up in the military after that....Different times...
I remember the neighbors heading down on their motorcycles after hearing the Thruway was closed.
As a man born in 1960, I don’t think we thank many of those young people nearly enough.
I was 7 years old in 1969,
I just drove by Yasgurs Farm on my way home Wednesday from camping along the Delaware River
There was a lot of activity in the area, I didn't realize it was because of the anniversary.
Germany. In the Army. Woodstock didn’t get much coverage on the local news.
I saw the movie twice on a huge screen when I got back to New Orleans.
Grace Slick and Santana stand out for me.
Wayne
For me credence Clearwater revival, Janice Joplin and jimi Hendrix stand out . I don't think jimi got to play until the wee hours of Sunday morning but rocked the star spangled banner!!
All though I do love me some Carlos Santana. Soooo smooth!
Daybreak
08-16-2021, 23:33
I got to stay up past my bedtime a month earlier to take a picture of Armstrong stepping on the moon so I wasn't allowed to ride my banana seat bike from Houston. Turned 9 a few weeks later. Maybe if I had asked to hike to NY... Learned to love maps pouring over the full page?? color Vietnam war map in the Sunday papers.
It would be really cool if someone had a first hand story of Woodstock,,,, anyone????
TexasBob
08-17-2021, 10:24
It would be really cool if someone had a first hand story of Woodstock,,,, anyone????
I was there - many years later. There is a museum at the site that tells the story of the festival and some of the performers. All very interesting. I was 15 and in Dallas at the time and the festival was big national news. The Woodstock album and the "Fish Cheer" was a favorite in my dorm when I got to college.
Traveler
08-18-2021, 07:56
In the late afternoon of August 15th, 1969 at the impressionable age of 15, I was hanging out in a nearby McDonalds parking lot with two friends of mine. As we were leaning against the hood of my buddy's car, trying to look as cool as a 15-year old could muster, a VW Microbus pulls in. It wasn't the unusual vehicle that captured our immediate attention as much as the exterior decor being painted in a riot of colors with peace signs and slogans emblazoned all over it. The side doors opened with a great commotion releasing both a huge cloud of smoke and four tye-dyed garbed fellows that tumbled out. Someone behind us said "Hippies" and I knew I was seeing something only printed about in newspapers right in front of me. I had heard of such things in our little part of the world, protected from much of the goings on simply by happenstance, we were miles from any main highways and towns that such sights were more common. But geographic circumstance yielded to history this late afternoon.
Most of my group of pals wore the haircut styles of our fathers, crew cuts or "high and tight" were abundant in the male population in rural America at that time. Imagine my wonder when these fellows spilled out of that little van sporting more hair than I have ever seen, one of them reaching below their shoulders. They were very friendly, a bit louder than most strangers to the small part of town we called "4-corners" where there were three filling stations and this one McDonalds located on all four corners. Who said hayseeds aren't imaginative and subject to place naming whimsey. They got their food as we watched them, entranced with what these 19 - 25 year olds did, how they dressed, and perhaps most interesting was the "big free show" they were going on and on about. A free concert in Bethel NY? Why that was only an hour or so from here. We had not heard of a free concert, but we did not hear about a lot of things in my old hometown.
The bravest among us, Billy, took up conversation about this show with the driver, who claimed "Everyone" would be there, Santana, Joplin, Hendrix, and a bunch more. They asked, "Hey little dudes, you want to come along, its not far away and should be a lot of fun". Given it was still afternoon and we had assurances these fellows had to be back this way by late evening, we decided to tag along. I won't go into detail of the ride, harrowing and exciting as it was. It was my first exposure to pot and other substances, though that van was tame as compared with the drug vendors at the concert site. I can still hear people hawking their wares akin to the hotdog and beer guys at a ball game. "Hallucinogenics, hallucinogenics heah" and "Git yer weed heah, best weed since Panama Red", a facet of life I had never imagined could exist.
We got about a mile or so from the site near White Lake and traffic was stopped dead, so our new friends said they would park where we were and we would walk in the rest of the way. As we approached the concert site, the number of people piling in was, in a word, stunning. I had never seen so many people, never mind dressed as they were for the occasion. At some point we walked over a broken fence that was apparently someones idea of how best to funnel the crowd into chutes where tickets could be seen and/or sold but didn't work out. So in we went. By the time we arrived, Arlo Guthrie as on, followed by Joan Baez, which unfortunately our time at the concert ended when we realized how late it was and how much trouble with our parents we were in.
Billy had the more progressive parents between the three of us, so we left the site until we could find a phone a very nice woman allowed us to use to call home. She must have seen the concern on our collective faces of this event that seemed to grow larger with each passing hour. After some explanations to his parents, who by now were frantic and the concert was starting to drive news, his cousin was sent to rescue us with instructions to start walking south on Rt 17b and he would see us. Billy's mom called my parents along with David's to let them know we were fine, that we were literally shanghaied to the concert site, were very sorry for the worry, and were in process of being picked up and brought back home.
It was all a blur for the most part, lots of interesting things heard, seen, and done along the way. My parents were rather angry and I suffered an immediate beating from my father (which oddly made me more interested in the politics of this counter-culture), and I think by calendar this year I am almost done with grounding by the end of next month.
The sound at the event from where we were was lousy, but did like Baez, we never saw our four new pals again once we hit the festival, I saw my first uninhibited women among the throngs there, the walk out was not a lot of fun, Billy's cousin laughed and taunted us all the way home, my parents were livid to the point I was not allowed to associate with David or Billy again ever, and when school started a few weeks later we were the talk of the student body in our small high school.
I wouldn't have missed this adventure for the world.
What a great story thanks so much Traveler. That sounds exactly what I would have done and would have been well worth the ass whooping when I got home.
Traveler that was a good story and cool to hear that you experienced the festival. That and your a very good story teller.Thank you for sharing that...
Jonnycat
08-18-2021, 14:02
That was an amazing story Traveler, thank you for letting me live vicariously through you for that experience.
Night Train
08-19-2021, 12:17
Traveler, many thanks, I enjoyed reading your experience. Arlo Guthrie-live in color! Wow! Making a phone call from a kind strangers landline used to be common place in rural America, nonexistent now.
fudgefoot
08-20-2021, 11:58
Fantastic story Traveler, summed up perfectly by your last sentence.
wornoutboots
05-11-2023, 13:00
In the late afternoon of August 15th, 1969 at the impressionable age of 15, I was hanging out in a nearby McDonalds parking lot with two friends of mine. As we were leaning against the hood of my buddy's car, trying to look as cool as a 15-year old could muster, a VW Microbus pulls in. It wasn't the unusual vehicle that captured our immediate attention as much as the exterior decor being painted in a riot of colors with peace signs and slogans emblazoned all over it. The side doors opened with a great commotion releasing both a huge cloud of smoke and four tye-dyed garbed fellows that tumbled out. Someone behind us said "Hippies" and I knew I was seeing something only printed about in newspapers right in front of me. I had heard of such things in our little part of the world, protected from much of the goings on simply by happenstance, we were miles from any main highways and towns that such sights were more common. But geographic circumstance yielded to history this late afternoon.
Most of my group of pals wore the haircut styles of our fathers, crew cuts or "high and tight" were abundant in the male population in rural America at that time. Imagine my wonder when these fellows spilled out of that little van sporting more hair than I have ever seen, one of them reaching below their shoulders. They were very friendly, a bit louder than most strangers to the small part of town we called "4-corners" where there were three filling stations and this one McDonalds located on all four corners. Who said hayseeds aren't imaginative and subject to place naming whimsey. They got their food as we watched them, entranced with what these 19 - 25 year olds did, how they dressed, and perhaps most interesting was the "big free show" they were going on and on about. A free concert in Bethel NY? Why that was only an hour or so from here. We had not heard of a free concert, but we did not hear about a lot of things in my old hometown.
The bravest among us, Billy, took up conversation about this show with the driver, who claimed "Everyone" would be there, Santana, Joplin, Hendrix, and a bunch more. They asked, "Hey little dudes, you want to come along, its not far away and should be a lot of fun". Given it was still afternoon and we had assurances these fellows had to be back this way by late evening, we decided to tag along. I won't go into detail of the ride, harrowing and exciting as it was. It was my first exposure to pot and other substances, though that van was tame as compared with the drug vendors at the concert site. I can still hear people hawking their wares akin to the hotdog and beer guys at a ball game. "Hallucinogenics, hallucinogenics heah" and "Git yer weed heah, best weed since Panama Red", a facet of life I had never imagined could exist.
We got about a mile or so from the site near White Lake and traffic was stopped dead, so our new friends said they would park where we were and we would walk in the rest of the way. As we approached the concert site, the number of people piling in was, in a word, stunning. I had never seen so many people, never mind dressed as they were for the occasion. At some point we walked over a broken fence that was apparently someones idea of how best to funnel the crowd into chutes where tickets could be seen and/or sold but didn't work out. So in we went. By the time we arrived, Arlo Guthrie as on, followed by Joan Baez, which unfortunately our time at the concert ended when we realized how late it was and how much trouble with our parents we were in.
Billy had the more progressive parents between the three of us, so we left the site until we could find a phone a very nice woman allowed us to use to call home. She must have seen the concern on our collective faces of this event that seemed to grow larger with each passing hour. After some explanations to his parents, who by now were frantic and the concert was starting to drive news, his cousin was sent to rescue us with instructions to start walking south on Rt 17b and he would see us. Billy's mom called my parents along with David's to let them know we were fine, that we were literally shanghaied to the concert site, were very sorry for the worry, and were in process of being picked up and brought back home.
It was all a blur for the most part, lots of interesting things heard, seen, and done along the way. My parents were rather angry and I suffered an immediate beating from my father (which oddly made me more interested in the politics of this counter-culture), and I think by calendar this year I am almost done with grounding by the end of next month.
The sound at the event from where we were was lousy, but did like Baez, we never saw our four new pals again once we hit the festival, I saw my first uninhibited women among the throngs there, the walk out was not a lot of fun, Billy's cousin laughed and taunted us all the way home, my parents were livid to the point I was not allowed to associate with David or Billy again ever, and when school started a few weeks later we were the talk of the student body in our small high school.
I wouldn't have missed this adventure for the world.
I Love It!!!!