We rode out in the heat toward the New York State sunshine and 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. This 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 and with real flowers in long grungy hair. I met a man with a bag full of dogends who said he hadn’t littered a butt since he came back from Vietnam. I was told that some were living there permanently, in the forest. Everyone was part of the same giant dysfunctional family. As Canadians, we had the air of prodigal sons, returning for the great feast.
Cramped cars became opium dens. The LSD afflicted youth danced. We smoked mushrooms under heavy rain. I played guitar right beside the man who was offering a square meal of chilli for a dollar. There was music everywhere. Deadbeats stole Brigitte’s flute. We traded. We found a way to buy beer and got lost in the endless fields for days. All the while, they cheered us on for being fools.