Originally Posted by
Traveler
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.