Thursday, November 18, 2010

Remembering Woodstock


Remembering Woodstock
I recently had a moment of reckoning when I watched the original Woodstock Movie.
1969 was a big year.:
The US put a man on the moon ( although there are some that don’t believe it)
The New York Mets won the World Series (against all odds.)
And in a small town in Rural New York State, 500,000 people gathered for the biggest Rock Festival the world has ever known.

It was a big year for me too:
I graduated from High School;
I got my Driver’s License
And I started my first part time job as a cashier at N&D, a Windsor Owned and Operated Grocery Store.

As the famous festival Rocked and Rolled, I was checking out groceries and making $2.00 an hour. I remember we could buy 4 loaves of bread for $1, so you might say “that was a lot of bread”. Bread was also a slang term for money.

The movie chronicling the event came out the next year. It was 1970 and Windsor was thrilled to open their first mall, The Devonshire. We walked through the place with reverence, in total awe of the sights and sounds. Amidst the oohs and ahhs, we behaved like gullible tourists. We couldn’t believe that this was our mall in our town. Windsor had finally hit the big time.

And, of course, everyone wanted to see the Woodstock Movie. It was the next best thing to being there. In retrospect it was better than being there. We could sit back, eat our popcorn and enjoy the music without dealing with the crowds or traffic or rain or lack of restrooms. Or maybe that’s just my mature brain’s opinion.
Actually attending the 3 days at Woodstock was probably the experience of a lifetime and the inconveniences were part of the charm. Some of my most memorable trips are the ones where everything went wrong and we had to live by our wits.

What I really can’t get over is that it’s been 41 years! It seems like a long time ago, but trust me, those years went by very quickly. Now, many of the Flower Power generation are pushing up Daisies ( if you know what I mean) and the rest of us are entering our senior years.

I was shocked to see Peter Frampton on Oprah recently. He used to be a hottie back in the day. He’s a full blown geezer now! Still a good looking geezer, but a geezer nevertheless!
I could imagine him playing his guitar in Florida between rounds at a Bingo Hall. Maalox still rocks!
Oprah also had David Cassidy on that show. He still looks pretty good, but I expect him to be selling Home Reverse Mortgages or those easy entry door bath tubs before long. He can be the next Ed McMahon!

The 60’s marked major changes in civil rights, social attitudes and morality, but nothing from this decade left a deeper imprint than the music. We moved and grooved to the enormous talent of such artists as Jimmie Hendrix, the Who, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker and many more. Sadly, many of them burned out before their time due to drug addictions and excessive lifestyle.

My all time favourite band is Crosby Stills and Nash, before Neil Young (who should change his name to “not so young” if you get my drift). Their lyrics and melodious harmonies epitomized the essence of that era. Woodstock was their debut. It was only the second time they had played in front of a live audience. And what an audience it was!

There is now a Museum at Bethel Woods to commemorate Woodstock and the 60’s and you could say that those of us who remember those days have become Museum pieces as well. Groovy man!

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