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WILKES-BARRE — It was 2009 and I was writing a few stories on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock.
I met a man who lived on Route 17-B, the main artery leading to Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, N.Y.
The man’s name was Ralph Liff, who at the time was 91 and he was weed-whacking his lawn along the highway when I stopped to chat.
Ralph provided the simplest, yet best analysis of Woodstock 1969:
“It was a weekend to remember,” he said.
It sure was a weekend to remember during a year to never forget.
For instance, in 1969:
• Richard M. Nixon was inaugurated 37th president of the U.S.
• Sen. Edward M. Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of fatal accident at Chappaquiddick, Mass. (July 18) in which Mary Jo Kopechne was drowned — he received a two-month suspended sentence (July 25).
• Apollo 11 astronauts — Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., — take first walk on the Moon (July 20).
In the sports world:
• Super Bowl III, the Joe Namath-led New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts.
• And in the World Series, the Amazing New York Mets defeated the Baltimore Orioles, 4 games to 1.
But it was that weekend in August — Aug 15-18 — that captured the nation’s and world’s attention. Three days of peace and music and, some say, love too.
More than half a million people gathered in the small, upstate New York town of Bethel — near the original planned site of Woodstock, N.Y. — for four days of rain, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
Performers included Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Jefferson Airplane and Sly and the Family Stone.
My friend Ricky Barney was there. At the time, Barney was a 17-year-old self-proclaimed “stoner” from Plymouth when he went to Woodstock.
Barney told me the people at Woodstock shared everything — even some things that you didn’t want to share. He said many fell victim to drinks or food laced with LSD, causing them to miss some of the concert. A voice came over the loudspeaker warning the crowd to stay away from “the brown acid.”
“Things got passed around,” he said. “I don’t remember all of the weekend.”
But certain things remain crystal clear in Barney’s mind.
“The rain turned everything to stink; the place (an alfalfa farm) smelled like cow manure,” he said. “Yet we were all glad to be there.”
Barney said everyone was shoulder to shoulder.
“You were kind of put there,” he said. “You couldn’t leave, but you didn’t want to.”
And 40 years later, I visited the site and saw the museum that sits atop the hill where “thee” concert was held in 1969. Over the hill an amphitheater has been built to house concerts in state-of-the-art fashion. Commercialization has come to Woodstock.
The interactive Museum at Bethel Woods gives everyone — former hippies, baby boomers and even those who weren’t around in 1969 — a true feel for what happened in this rural New York town that year.
I’ve been back to Bethel several times, always stopping to chat with Duke Devlin, a man of great Woodstock knowledge and a man of many philosophical words.
“It was ‘the’ concert, man,” Duke said. “Three days where people came to breathe air that was never breathed before.”
Duke said Woodstock was meant to be on Max Yasgur’s farm.
“Do you know the term Bethel in Hebrew means ‘House of God?’ Think about it, man,” he said.
Devlin always smiles when he talks about Woodstock, then and now.
“I love my job,” he once told me. “I’d do it for a box of Twinkies and a Yoo-Hoo.”
Back to Mr. Liff, who graduated high school with Yasgur. He remembered that weekend in 1969 very clearly.
“That road right there was a parking lot,” Liff told me, pointing to 17-B. “Thousands of kids walked right by my house here and they all were friendly.”
Liff said his wife walked over to the site one night to check it out.
“She came back and said, ‘Ralph, you’re not going to believe what’s going on over there.’ I’ve lived here since 1919 and I’ve never seen anything like it before or since and never will,” Liff said.
I hear there is a 50th anniversary concert planned for Watkins Glen, N.Y. I’m not interested at all — not because it wouldn’t be fun, but because it wouldn’t be Woodstock.
Some history just can’t — or shouldn’t — be repeated.
