"Here!" "Yo!"

Count me in as one more Woodstock attendee.

I was there for just about 24 hours, sunrise Saturday through sunrise Sunday.

I had not planned to attend; I was living at my parents' house in New Jersey after failing to graduate from college (as expected) in June '69, working 40 hours Mon-Fri at a factory job and saving up to return to school for one lousy three-credit course.

The newspapers, of course, were full of stories about the massive crowds, the NY Throughway being closed, etc. Shortly after getting home from work Friday evening, I got a phone call from a friend who was living with his folks, in circumstances not unlike my own, out on Long Island ~ "Wanna go to Woodstock?"

My initial reaction, of course, was "No way." How could we expect to get within miles of the place?

He explained that an old friend of his knew the back roads of the Catskills like a native, having summered there with his family all his life, and had volunteered to navigate if given a ride. This guy lived on Staten Island.

Some of you may know your Metropolitan New York geography, but I'm sure that many others do not. Suffice it to say that it took quite a while, on a Friday evening, for my buddy to leave suburban Long Island in his vintage 1947 Pontiac sedan, drive the Belt Parkway around Queens and Brooklyn to the Verrazano Bridge, find his friend's home somewhere on Staten Island, continue west across the Ooterbridge Crossing into central New Jersey, and finally pull into our driveway in Plainfield around midnight.

We took the Parkway only about as far as the NJ-NY state line and then moved over to two-lane back roads. It was dark, I had no idea where we were and how quickly we were making progress, and I eventually fell asleep in that old Pontiac's big comfy back seat. I awoke as we were pulling up to park at the side of a road, just as the sun was coming up.

"This is about as close as we're gonna get," said our guide (a fellow I had never met before, would never see again, and whose name I can't remember). We got out to walk and, in no more than 15 minutes, we came to the top of a hill and could see the stage down at the bottom. Yes!

Woodstock was, of course, famously wet and muddy, but the day we were there was the driest. The effects of the previous days of heavy rain were evident, of course; the footing was slippery and in places the mud was pretty deep. It started to rain ~ just a bit ~ about the time the music was supposed to start, which delayed things for a while.

If I remember correctly (lol), the music finally got underway sometime during the afternoon. I'm just about positive that Canned Heat was the first act to appear after the rain had pretty-much stopped, but the skies were still pretty gloomy. Santana was playing when the sun finally broke through. One act followed another for the rest of the afternoon and evening, all the way through until sunrise Sunday.

Bands I know we witnessed after dark included, in no particular order, the Who, Sly & Family Stone, CSN&Y ("we've never played in public before"), Jefferson Airplane, and last but not least, closing the proceedings as the sun was coming up with his famous rendition of the National Anthem, Jimi Hendrix.

When the music stopped that early Sunday morning (with an announcement that there'd be a long break before starting the "next day's" schedule), we stood up, walked to the car, and returned to our respective homes. We followed (I assume) the same back-road route that got us there, and didn't encounter any traffic, roadblocks, or hindrances of any kind. All three of us were up and at 'em
and at our respective jobs that Monday morning.