<p>I always tell people the “sixties” were really 1965-1975. After the Kennedy assassination.</p>
<p>It was exciting. But a lot of it was confusing and scary.</p>
<p>Dazed and confused…not confused and scary.</p>
<p>^^ it was very scary for young men who were wondering what they would do if their draft number was low!!!</p>
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<p>Gosh what I wouldn’t give to be that kind of a mom…it just seems we all worry so much about so much these days.</p>
<p>btw- I was 2 so nope didn’t get to go. I did become a bit of a deadhead in my teens so I guess I made up for it in my own way. I do remember when I was about 10 reading a book called Cathy and the Beautiful People, about a music festival coming to a small town. I always wished I was Cathy… :)</p>
<p>“dazed and confused” is a line from a song, thread about a rock concert, though that group wasn’t there</p>
<p>Yes! Yes, I was there! I have so many great memories about it – maybe I will bore people with some of them later (right now I’m busy getting ready to head out tomorrow for S2’s college orientation!). </p>
<p>But I will share one now, which is when my brother (I was 18, he was 16) were walking away from the concert, heading for the car of the person who was giving us a ride home. It was Monday morning, I think about 6:30 AM, and we could hear Jimi Hendrix playing The Star Spangled Banner. My brother was a huge Jimi Hendrix fan, and it was just an amazing thing, walking away in the morning light and hearing that music. Kind of a perfect ending to the whole thing.</p>
<p>ETA: [Wikipedia</a> tells me](<a href=“List of performances and events at Woodstock Festival - Wikipedia”>List of performances and events at Woodstock Festival - Wikipedia) that Jimi Hendrix played from 8:30 to 10:00 AM and that The Star-Spangled Banner was one of the last few songs he did, so I guess it was closer to 10 AM when we left. Still a great memory.</p>
<p>I wasn’t there, but I wish I had been. A piece of me was there, though. My brother went and took my sleeping bag, which went missing in the mud.</p>
<p>^^ Wow. That is great. Good luck at S orientation.</p>
<p>I was just slightly too young --14–to even think of going, but I did go that weekend to to a concert at the open air theater left over from the 1964 World’s Fair, where several of the Woodstock acts had flown in from upstate to perform. I can still remember!</p>
<p>I was only twelve so no but I went to Watkins Glen a few years later. </p>
<p>My niece’s roommate at college was Neil Young’s daughter and at one Parents Weekend my sister asked him about his experience at Woodstock. According to her they didn’t even know it was a big deal as they were flown in, performed, and flown out. Didn’t have a clue as to the magnitude until it was over.</p>
<p>Emilybee- The thought of walking into my kid’s dorm room and finding Neil Young has my imagination running wild.</p>
<p>I was 7 so no I didn’t go, but it is my favorite music. I used to follow a band here in Jersey in the early 80’s called Yasgur’s Farm that played all Woodstock music. It was great.</p>
<p>I was 14 and very close geographically. I was in Utica part of the week and Syracuse part of the week visiting older cousins. None of them ended up being able to “sneak off” and go.</p>
<p>“Emilybee- The thought of walking into my kid’s dorm room and finding Neil Young has my imagination running wild.”</p>
<p>Their kids have to go to college somewhere!</p>
<p>i worked in the Post Office and a supervisor posted on the bulletin board a note stating that anyone who didn’t show up for work that weekend would be fired. His threat succeeded as only two or three co-workers attended Woodstock. They were not fired.</p>
<p>My wife (I had not met her yet) went but didn’t get anywhere close to the stage and never saw the performers. I did go to Watkins Glen, and if someone starts a thread on that festival, will share a few of my stories about it.</p>
<p>There’s a cable TV special (4 hrs. long) airing on the Woodstock concert event right now. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot about what Woodstock was like. Three days of incredible music, of course. An event that took on a life of its own, with crowds that far exceeded the planner’s and promoter’s ability to keep things from getting out of hand. I wonder how many of the concert goers were stoned at any given moment during those three days. Lots of pot, LSD and heroin being ingested. Too little food and water. Too few port-a-potties, so there were people squatting out in the open to relieve themselves. Instances of people having sex in the open, too (the drugs having probably freed them of their inhibitions). Some women reported having been raped. Miserable squalor by the time the skies opened up and turned the concert into a giant mud pit. Many of the musicians were stoned out of their heads while performing. In many ways, Woodstock probably served as a microcosm of the excitement, wonder, chaos, excess, naivete and restlessness that was American youth culture at the time. I was thirteen, and of course, was not there. Knowing what we do now, many of us would probably freak if our kids participated in a Woodstock-like event. </p>
<p>Off-topic, sort of—but has anyone ever read Drop City by T. Coraghessan Boyle? It’s a fantastic novel about a late sixties commune in the Alaska wilderness.</p>
<p>Wow, they’re showing Joe Cocker’s famous rendition of “A Little Help From My Friends” right now. So cool!</p>
<p>poetsheart- I am sure you are right. Despite all that and the fact I was too young I still wish I had been there. 
And, yes I would freak if my kids particpated in something like that. </p>
<p>I will have to look up Drop City.</p>
<p>Where was that special, poetsheart? I coudln’t find it.</p>
<p>poetsheart, I’ll have to look up the book on Alaska. DH lived on a commune in Alaska from about 1978 to 1982. They had no running water or electricity and were self-sufficient for the most part.</p>
<p>I was only 6 at the time of Woodstock, so I have no memories of it. My main memory from that age was watching Walter Cronkite each night state the number of American solddiers who had been killed that day. It blew my mind.</p>
<p>Both DH and I were at Woodstock although not together. For years I kept my mud-covered sandals in a shoebox that got moved from apt to apt and somewhere got lost along the way, did not think I had saved my ticket which was never collected. I think I had some kind of a package price that included a bus from the Port Authority bus terminal in NYC. Still remember that it was cold and muddy and wet and I really did want a cup of coffee!</p>