Posted on 05/16/2020 9:05:10 AM PDT by knighthawk
Patti Mulhearn Lydon, 68, doesn’t have rose-colored memories of attending Woodstock in August 1969. The rock festival, which took place over four days in Bethel, NY, mostly reminds her of being covered in mud and daydreaming about a hot shower.
She was a 17-year-old high-school student from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, when she made the trek to Max Yasgur’s farm with her boyfriend Rod. For three nights, she shared an outdoor bedroom with 300,000 other rock fans from around the country, most of whom were probably not washing their hands for the length of “Happy Birthday” — or at all.
“There was no food or water, but one of our guys cut an apple into twenty-seven slices and we all shared it,” she said. At some point, a garden hose from one of the farm’s neighbors was passed around and strangers used it as a communal source for bathing and drinking, she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I agree about Monterey Pop
and Isle of Wight was larger but also had unruly crowds.
And so many events in 1969 that weren’t filmed or have had footage tied up for half a century.
Texas
Miami
Atlanta
Harlem
etc
“America Strong”
Think Trump!
You and I are exactly the same age. I also was eleven that year.
The boomers as I see it brought about all these laws putting bike helmets on people’s heads, etc...and get or got offended by everything at one time. Seems like they vote better as they get older. By 1980, many of us became Republicans. We weren’t lifelong rebels.
I was a Reagan Democrat, but supported Nixon I’ve voted for one Democrat ever; Carter. I hated Gerald Ford.
Another interesting thing people don’t notice is that there were two groups, the coastal boomers, represented by Woodstock and Haight Asbury, and the rural boomers, who smoked and drank and fished and shot guns, but grew their hair out. It is still apparent in today’s political divide.
Mainly because 1) we still had steely spines from WW II, 2) the nation hadn’t turned into a bunch of limp-wristed panty-waist snowflakes, 3) we didn’t have the press yammering about it non-stop 24x7, 4) Trump wasn’t running for re-election in an environment of no-holds-barred politics, and 5) the Internet hadn’t been invented.
Overlaid on all that I’d add the three big assassinations in the 60s; the rising discontent about Viet Nam; the huge race riots that burned many cities in the mid-60s; and the invention of “the pill.”
i think “the worst of us went to Woodstock” is a bit extreme. People grow up and change.
That was a good, little read.
I’m a coastal boomer. Lived in Southern California all my life.
Ditto. I totally agree the ‘hero’ word has been cheapened. Yes, it is Very admirable everyone who is doing their chosen jobs of helping and serving others.
It is also said, and admirable, those who go to work every day to provide for their family. Or any folks doing an honest days work or doing any good service. And many people risk their lives in all sorts of ways at work and where they live. I admire them all. And hope they do feel some good and appreciation. To call them each a hero, sets them all up for feeling not good enough though.
However even though President Trump is ‘just doing his job’ too. I see him as a hero.
President Trump is battling and trying to save us from Communism and all sort so evils. He is fighting all measures of monsters in many realms. I pray for him and his family daily. And all who support him.
Food ran out the first day. Roads were impassable, full of abandoned cars because there was nowhere to park them. The only way in or out was walking. The bands arrived by helicopter if at all. If you bought a ticket, you wasted your money, since the hippies tore down the fences and waltzed in for free. No toilet, no showers, no shelter. Anarchy (and mud) ruled.
To me, the whole show boiled down to a brief ten-second clip of one moment - two high school girls, obviously high as a kite, naked and giggling as they ate Spaghettio's straight from the can with their fingers (The canned food was donated by neighbors who shared with the starving idiots). I'm sure those kids' parents were proud of them.
We used to get LA TV. so I loved George Putnam. But the whole situation about many of our fellow boomers was crystallized for me when I taught college around 1996.
I was teaching out of a book called “Marketing to Generation X” and the writer was shredding the boomers. I didn’t want to get too graphic, but I told the students, “Ask your parents about the times. They’ll tell you.”
One young lady said, “My parents didn’t do that stuff.” I had known her parents in high school, and they always parked in the back row of the drive in and made the car jump. I just nodded back to her.
I was in my last year of college and I do not remember any thing about the Hong Kong Flu. And, yes, I was mostly sober that year too.
And when the Apollo astronauts returned they were quarantined in a sealed chamber for 3 weeks because they might have brought home moon-cooties!
Exactly. When the medical professionals put politics first to elevate themselves, like Dr. fraud and Dr. scarf you get a months long lockdowns with no end in sight in “recovery” spread out over phasers with no particular dates or metrics to go along with them.
Very true.
So true. The South did not “do” hippies. I graduated from High School in 1968 in Montgomery, Alabama. My dad was in the Air Force and we stationed there. I met a local boy and got married in 1969. My husband made a career with the Air National Guard there. He is still in the DOD as a contractor. I don’t remember anything different because of the epidemic.We graduated over 700 students in an non air conditioned coliseum. We went to horse shows every weekend. Now the horse industry(which is a lot bigger than most people think) is being destroyed like everything else. We are a nation of cowards now.
I was in college when the Hong Kong flu hit here. I remember going to Student Health and being put on an IV drip to re-hydrate. Approximately 100,000 people died in the U.S. from the HK flu, when the total population was only about 200,000,000. I don’t remember any lock downs.
I went back to Georgia in 1975 with my long hair. I asked a girl in a dress shop out and she said yes. But I was never properly introduced to her parents and that was cancelled quick.
There weren’t any lock downs.
They had “social distancing” I think they called it Woodstock!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.