Memories of Woodstock from Bethel New York in 1999

We rode out into the heat of the New York sunshine towards the original site of Woodstock. My '81 Tercel hatchback as our transportation (the $240 car that always "smelled like gas"). I was chasing the ghost of Jimi Hendrix, and the dream of a political movement I thought I was supposed to care about.

At the border crossing we were grilled and forced to empty our pockets. The was my first experience with the senseless power-tripping of US border officers (and not the last). All the while my best friend Surge had his marijuana safely rolled up in the leg of his pants. "They never look there", he told me later. I wonder how it would have affected us if they had found it?

The turnout was good that year. There were a thousand hippies on Yasgur's Farm. The authentic kind too, old, with real flowers in long grungy hair. I met a man with a bag full of dog-ends who said he hadn't littered a butt since he returned from Vietnam. I was told that some were living there in the forest permanently. Everyone was part of the same giant dysfunctional family. As Canadians, we had the air of prodigal sons, returning for a great feast. 

Cars cramped into corners and became opium dens. LSD afflicted youth danced. We smoked mushrooms under heavy rain. I played guitar beside a man who was offering the crowd a square meal for only a dollar. There was music everywhere. Deadbeats stole Brigitte's flute. We traded. We found a way to buy beer and got lost in endless fields for days. They cheered us on for being fools.