It was three A.M. August 11, 1969 and I was in my bunk in the barracks of B company of the 35th S&S Battalion, Flak Kaserne, Ludwigsberg, West Germany reading "Clockwork Orange", when the Company Clerk walked in and told me I had a long distance call from "the world"(the USA). It was my father on the phone with the bad news that my stepmother had died of a heart attack. It is the policy to grant a 30 day emergency leave to soldiers who lose a member of their immediate family, so by late that afternoon I was getting ready to board a plane at Frankfurt Rein Main Airport for home.

For the next two days I stayed with my family to help them greet visitors etc. After the funeral I went to visit one of my best and lifelong friends Jimmy Leinen and he showed me a mimeographed piece of paper that someone had given him. It was all crumpled up, and the original had been handwritten in a somewhat sloppy hand. It was an advertisement for a rock festival scheduled for the following weekend just one day away. When I saw the list of artists that were supposed to play I said to jim:

"Yeah right! Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Who, AND Jefferson Airplane?!? Who gave you this thing anyway?" I said waving the crumpled torn paper at him.

"Some guy in a far out VW bus was givin' 'em out by the lake yesterday. He swore that this was the real thing."

"Probably a bunch of crap" I said.

"Oh yeah? Well what if it really happens and we miss it? He asked with an indignant smile and then added seriously "besides, the guy seemed sincere."

"maybe" I said with more than a little doubt showing in my voice and then on a brighter note, "shit, it would be fun to drive down there anyway, so let's!"

Despite my initial doubts, on Friday August 15th, 1969 at about 9:30 a.m., myself, Jimmy, Frank Collela, and another friend of ours, Eddie Shanahan climbed in Frank's car and started off on the close to 300 mile trip to Bethal, New York. Bethel is a small town near the artist community of Woodstock and the place the concert was actually held. The concert wasn't in the town itself, but on a farm outside town owned by one Max Yazgar(may he rest in peace). Frank was the self- assigned leader on this mission and as it turned out, at least in this case, we were glad he was. He was the resident acid guru of the group of people I hung around with, and well versed in the knowledge of all drugs and hippy philosophy. Somebody jokingly nicknamed him Krank Furella and it stuck.

It was about 2:30 in the afternoon when we got as close as we could by car. This was not very near the event - about a 12 mile walk. The scene looked like this: The road leading from where we stopped was a two lane, two way country road, with a vehicle width shoulder on both sides. It was packed solid, four cars across as far as the eye could see - a giant snake crawling off into the distance. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars mixed in with the rest, all at a total standstill, and unoccupied.

"Fuck this!" said Frank "There has gotta be a better way" and while he said this he was already backing up and heading down a country road to the left and away from the throng of cars. He didn't even think to ask for a vote, but even if he had, I think we would have all agreed not to take a 12 mile hike just then.

We drove down that road for about a mile and then took a right on another even smaller road, hoping to find a back way in. After about a half hour of weaving around on this very bumpy road, we came upon a farm on our right, with a farmer standing next to his barn holding a pitchfork like a staff at his side, and wearing coveralls, like he was posing for the portrait "American Gothic". Frank got out and asked the guy if he knew a back way in the concert. He said for $20 he did. We scraped that together among us, which took some scraping as none of us had much money and $20 was a lot in those days. Frank handed him the money and we proceeded to follow this guy in our car as he drove his tractor on highly inaccessible roads through farm fields, woods and pastures, for a good twenty minutes, until suddenly there we were!

In our car in the middle of 500,000 people! Didn't have to walk at all.

What really made Woodstock unique was that the authorities didn't have any idea how many of us were going to show up. They were not ready. That is why all other attempts at this type of concert afterward pale by comparison. At Watkins Glenn, for example, the authorities were ready to make people march to their tune, with a hoard of policeman and vendors to sell every kind of crap one can imagine. And then there was Altamont, where the 'Stones' made the mistake of hiring the 'Hells Angels' as security guards and "the Angels" idea of security was murdering concert goers who stepped out of line. At Woodstock people were doing exactly what they wanted to do, and there was no one to tell them they couldn't use drugs, go naked, or publicly make love. I saw a guy with a huge hunk of hashish sitting on the back of his station wagon, nude, selling the stuff, while a policeman stood not 20 feet away watching this with a sort of a stunned, powerless look on his face, like a little boy who has lost track of his mother at the grocery store.

I know, I know. We were pretty wild, and our viewpoints were rather idealistic and oversimplified. The "love generation" people had no clue that there revolution would come to a grinding halt with the advent of AIDS twenty years later. All this considered, we still accomplished something significant in my opinion. We got together with 500,000 people for three days of peace and music. Let me put it another way. We were a major city for three days. Two babies were born, and not one act of violence is recorded as having been committed. I certainly didn't witness one. I challenge anyone to Find one city this size then find any three day period in it's history that was violence free.

Not likely!!

  Want more about Woodstock? Just drop by the Woodstock '69 Page or the Yasgar's Farm site, or even read  exerpts from the novel, "Max Yasgar's Farm"  by Dan Patrick Bimrose.  For tons of information about this unique historical event.  Also, for links to alot of the bands of that time please visit Dave Bergers Excellent 60s band link page And be sure not to miss Woostock Radio