The Catskill Chronicle

This photo was taken in 2006 during the CSNY Concert when so many people showed up the parking lot at Bethel Woods wasn’t yet large enough to hold them. The years pass, but the spirit remains true.

Story and photo by Jason Dole

It’s hard to believe it’s been a week since it’s been 40 years since Woodstock happened. Time flies, maaan…It seems just like yesterday we were all watching Woodstock documentaries on TeeVee and visiting the happy hippie museum at Bethel Woods. Of course, it wasn’t yesterday. It’s been a full seven or eight days since Woodstock Weekend ‘09.

The historic anniversary and nice weather drew thousands to Sullivan County on August 14-17. Folks came for remembrances official and unofficial, represented by both the pre-packaged “Heroes of Woodstock” show at Bethel Woods and the shaggy dog gathering of the tribes at Hector’s Last Chance Saloon up the road from the original site

Who comes out for these things? Sure, there are a few of the original “hippies” and the first and second generation hippie wannabes. They are old now, many of them burnt (or at least a bit singed) by the dalliances of their youth. But a weekend like this also appeals to fresh-faced youngsters: future farmers, future powerbrokers, and infantile frat boys alike, all enthralled with the ghost of the 60s.

And there were lots of regular folks from all around the county, the Catskills, and the world beyond. There was the Jeffersonville Class of ’69, which gathered at Bethel Woods for its reunion. There were friends and families and tourists. There was national media, local media, and many merry merchants.

Count me with that last group. I was at Bethel Woods on August 15. I was there to sell shirts and, man, did they sell. Bethel Woods printed a special anniversary shirt for the day and it sold out long before the sun set.

Before the show, people crowded all around our merch tent. At one point, I realized a guy standing a foot away from me looked kind of familiar. He was a bunch of curly hair under a hat, with sunglasses and a camera. Everything else about him was a smile, one giant grin with a chin. It was Michael Lang, original co-creator of Woodstock. We exchanged greetings, and he went back to smiling and taking pictures.

So, it was a beautiful day and everyone was there. Some 15,000 people filled the sold-out show. They took in acts like Big Brother and the Holding Company (not a Woodstock act) with their Janis replacement, or Canned Heat with Harvey “The Snake” Mandel on guitar. Paul Kanter’s latest Jefferson Starship mob benefited from Jeff Pevar on bass, and after Mountain blew them all away, Leslie West got married on stage.

Woodstock veteran Country Joe was on hand to emcee and perform. Joe is best known for his anti-war song “Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag,” but he does a lot to support veterans, especially Viet Nam era vets. He continued this good work on the stage of Bethel Woods by taking the time to read the names of Sullivan County’s war dead, including servicemen from Viet Nam and the current Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

God bless Country Joe for reminding people that “peace” is what you fight for in the face of its opposite, and that the young people who fight wars are real people with real names, not some faceless “other.”

“What does Woodstock have to do with peace?” That question came from a college-bound freshman that I was working with. Oh boy.

I told him, “Look kid, you can say that Woodstock was bull and I’ll honor your opinion, but don’t try to tell me there wasn’t any peace at Woodstock.”

“But there wasn’t any.”

Oh, man! Talk about revisionist history. Woodstock may be over-hyped by the boomers, but you can’t say it wasn’t peaceful.

How many people got hurt there through violence or aggression? Some 400 thousand people sat exposed to the elements, without food or facilities, pumped up on a pantheon of chemical combinations for three or four days. Any week in America, you can watch a picture-perfect wedding devolve into a bitchy fight fest in less than two hours.

Just look at the Rolling Stones’ Altamont show, only four months after Woodstock, to see how quickly hedonism can take a destructive turn. It’s Woodstock’s dark flipside, and it must not be forgotten. Altamont shows that luck played a big part at Woodstock. Those kids were lucky and their location was the luckiest.

Think about it. While Altamont had the Hells Angels, the kids at the disaster area known as Woodstock had all of Sullivan County pulling for them. They got our merchants, our nurses, our law enforcement, our local folks handing out sandwiches. They got our back roads and frolic-ready mountain ponds. They got our garden.

Woodstock attendees also got a surprising amount of middle-aged locals like Ken Van Loan of Ken’s Garage in Kauneonga Lake. These people didn’t understand the strange changes happening around them but they reacted with wisdom, showing compassion for the strange youth rather than fear and rage.

“Every time I went up there, there was this naked guy walking a goat,” recalled Van Loan when I spoke to him last year. He was doing mechanics work and towing for Woodstock and was often near the backstage area. That’s where the goat guy was.

“I thought he was nutty,” continues Van Loan. “Turns out he wasn’t so nutty after all. The world was just changing.”

Along those lines, citizens of the Woodstock Nation were really lucky when they got Max Yasgur. They got a local farmer who loved America, especially its freedoms of speech and assembly. They got Yasgur’s wide open field and parts of fields owned by his grudging neighbors.

And all of it was covered by the best skies in Sullivan County, then and now. Even a mediocre sunset in Bethel is pretty spectacular. And on August 15, 2009 – 40 years after the music, the mud and the mayhem – I had my dinner under Bethel’s beautiful setting sun.

I sat at the top of the hill where it all happened. Folks dotted the original field below (now a soft green lawn), facing an imaginary stage. Work vehicles threw up dust as they rolled along Hurd and West Shore roads. In the fields beyond, cars sat parked in nice, neat rows.

I sat there, trying once again to imagine what it was like in one weekend in 1969. It was a little easier to do on that anniversary evening, enjoying a break and a bite to eat while Ten Years After (minus Alvin Lee) chugged along.

I came to the same conclusion I always do: I remain dumfounded that Woodstock happened in Sullivan County, but damned proud that it did.

**Editor’s note:

To read more about the Woodstock 40th Reunion check out Jeanne Sager’s take on the day at her blog – Inside Out.

And if you still aren’t sure that the spirit of Woodstock is alive and well, here is a video from the Chatham Rockers, a young group in New York City.