My Most Memorable Vacation

My best vacation ever took place 40 years ago but still carries memories for me and an entire generation of my peers. It was the summer of 1969. The amateur numerologist in me was convinced that the year would hold promise for a pubescent youngster like me.

I had graduated from middle school and faced the challenge of my freshman year of high school. How could I spend my summer vacation and gain the mojo necessary to gain some acceptance in high school. I was fourteen years old so options were scarce. I had very little money and of course, no transportation. Oh and we can't forget to point out that anything I may have come up with as a suitable adventure would have to be approved by my parents. While they weren't particularly strict, as immigrants from Italy, there were certain cautions that insisted I abide.

I decided that I could develop an image over the summer that might serve as an attention getter as I entered the realm of upper classmen. It was the sixties. The nature movement was gathering momentum. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson were my favorite writers. (The fact that, at 14, I had favorite authors speaks volumes about how un-cool I was at the time.) Regardless, they were the poster children for the "back to nature" movement. They gave me the idea for the adventure that could foster some intrigue about me.

I decided that a backpacking trip would be a perfect project that would offer adventure and provide me an opportunity to chronicle my travels photographically. Let me point out that Ansel Adams was my favorite photographer and was accepted extensively by the younger generation despite his being over 30 years old.

The decision was made. I would arrange a backpacking trip with a few friends thus demonstrating my fellowship with the cool "back to nature" crowd. I would take rolls and rolls of nature film to show the wonders of nature as seen through a 35mm camera. It wasn't much but, I was only 14 years old and lacked transportation.

The only thing left to do was convince my parents that I could be trusted to be away in the wood with friends for a week. After all, they had no problem with me spending weekends in the local state forest using the skills I learned as a scout. I anticipated the one objection my mother would raise, "why must you go camping so far away?" There is a perfectly fine forest down the street to roam around."

I answer came to me after hearing an ad on the local rock station about a "music festival" taking place in a small town in Up State New York, "Woodstock" I told my dad. I explained our plan to use our navigation skills learned in boy scouts to backpack a portion of the blue trail until we reached Woodstock, New York. We would set up camp and catch a few of the greatest rock bands of the decade.

After enduring a long interrogation by my parents, they agreed that the fresh air would do me good and what kind of trouble could we get into in the middle of the woods. We were Woodstock bound. We didn't exactly know where Woodstock, New York was located. We didn't find out until we were already on the road riding with a group of "hippies" in a VW micro-van that the festival was being held in Bethel, N.Y., not that it matter to us.

We hitch-hiked all the way, traveling the New York Thruway. We arrived on the Wednesday before the start of the official festivities. At the time, there were only a handful of young long-haired teenagers strolling into the small town that boasted a post office, town hall and small general store. The town folk were kind and unassuming. Little did they know that within a matter of 24-48 hours, the town would be host to half a million teenagers whose only concern beside "stop the war" was sex, drugs and rock and roll.

As I said, we arrived on Wednesday with little fanfare. After purchasing all sorts of edibles from the general store, we made our way to the farm that provided the concert ground. We were greeted by a farmer who reminded me of Festus, the character from the western serial, Gunsmoke. "My name's Yasgur, Max Yasgur. You must be the fellas here to put on this shin gig."

"No, we are just reveler here to enjoy fun and music." We asked him where we could set up camp and he kindly pointed the way to the trail that would lead to a site that he thought would provide the best view of the concert stand and still be well away from the regular concert goers.

By Wednesday evening, before the sun set, we had set up our campsite. It occurred to us that we failed to bring some supplies that would be needed to enjoy our time in the woods, like a tent, especially since the forecast was for steady rain. As we lay there, on our sleeping bags wondering if we could obtain some sort of shelter, my ears started playing tricks on me. I jokingly mentioned to my friend that the voice I heard sounded amazingly like one of the towns well known rascals. When I sat up, low and behold it was him, followed by a group of his posse carrying every nature of camping gear like African supply bearers. Things were looking up.

We left them to set up their camp adjacent to our camp which was neatly nestled by a brook. It was Wednesday night as we followed the noise of the sound checks by the roadies prepping for their band's appearance. It turned out to be the last time we saw our campsite or our friends. We found an excellent spot to view the greatest rockers of the generation. The list of performer included The Who, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and so many more. We tried to decide who we would stay to see, what shifts would we keep so one of us could go back to the site while the other guarded our space. It seemed to be coming along. Our plan might have worked had it not been for something called electric coolade that may it's way into my hands. A harmless bottle of sweet cool liquid that was the only thing around to quench my thirst almost undid me.

My memories after that point are a bit fuzzy. I recall hearing the other worldly sounds of Ravi Shankar's sitar. I distinctly remember chanting to the ravings of Country Joe and the Fish. Cosby, Stills, Nash and Young soothed. Hendrix blew my mind. The Who incited passions. I still get chills when certain "classic rock" songs play on the radio.

I was in the midst of one of the greatest demonstrations of the cohesiveness of the youth of the time. "No war" was a chant that reverberated all the way to Washington, DC. None of us could appreciate the historic event that was unfolding in a small burb in New York. We were happy just to be there.

I spent the entire 5 days at the concert ground. People around us banded together sharing whatever we had to fashion breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was very close to the wall erected to allow the performer to play some 40 feet above the crowd. The wooden wall was huge. A group of people were working feverishly painting the fence in psychedelic colors. Everyday, I noticed writing that was beginning to form around and within the colors. It was like a puzzle. A letter 20 feet high would become legible by morning. Another few letters by nightfall. But what would it say. Was it a message. If so, could they complete it by festivals end?

I awoke on Sunday morning. The routine of sharing food continued. A grass roots organization known as "The Pig Farm" ran a food bank so the 100s of thousands of revelers could eat. We bathed naked in the beautiful ponds that spotted the farm. As I stood there feeling this incredible brother and sisterhood with those around me, I looked at the concert stage wall. There it was. Plain as day a phrase I pondered letter by letter over the days past. As I stood there with the overwhelming feeling of brotherhood, I read it. It was a phrase that summed up the entire gestalt of my emotion at the time. It simply read, "WE ARE ALL ONE".

It is the 40th year anniversary of that event. I was looking for a summer vacation never to forget. Did it provide me with the mojo that would mark me as "cool" entering high school? By the time we strolled back into the small Connecticut town on our return trip, the media was still extolling the impact and meaning of what had happened in a small town named Woodstock. Although we had a certain amount of notoriety for attending, when asked what happened at Woodstock, I couldn't help but reply "nothing, nothing at all happened at Woodstock." The festival, after all, was held in Bethel, N.Y.