Woodstock Three

Westlake Lake

March 19,2011

Secured to one of Landings finger docks.

2:28 PM

The buttered half roll not yet consumed, moving it in a small circle on the table.

Quiet a long moment. Thinking a long moment, then moving to my side of the table and sitting closely alongside, Sherrie’s voice dropping to a conspiratorially low tone.

“I’m going to tell you something…” Sherry whispered — as though anyone was anywhere near close enough to hear “...but you’ve got to promise not to tell ‘anyone’, especially Milt, ‘cause I don’t think he’d understand.”

Anxiously wanting to hear what this innocent appearing; giving for her age, still beautiful seventy-seven year old woman had to do with ‘Morning Lust’ at Woodstock back in nineteen sixty-nine.

“Of course…” Marsha whispered sincerely “...I promise!”

 Westlake Village

March 19, 2011

10:20 PM

Keeping her promise to Sharon… So Far!

Still cool. The slider closed. Marsha and Mitchell in panamas. He on his side facing her— listening as…

“Sherry said that the organisers had sold eighteen thousand tickets promoting ‘Woodstock’, which… A bit of trivia here, baby: Watergate was supposed to be in the town of ‘Watergate’ about forty mile up the road, but the town cancelled because they didn’t want thousands of hippies and beatniks running around raising hell throughout their town…”

“Can’t say I blame them.”

“Me either…” Marsha said “..but a lot of money spent on promotion and too late to cancel, the venue was switched to the town of Bethel that desperately needed the money the festival would bring in. So now they needed to find a place to hold it, and the organisers found this huge cow-pasture that they… the organiser rented for five days for seven grand.”

 Billed as 3 Days of Peace & Music, referred to as the ‘Woodstock Rock Festival’ where thirty-two acts were performed outdoors despite sporadic rain.

By the time they got to the field, Sherry said, there had to be a thousand or more people that had secured ‘their’ couple of feet, a dozen yards or so before the stage — that was still under construction— with an endless amount of people clambering about claiming their inches of space as close to the stage as possible.

“Phew!” Thinking of body odder after a couple of rainy days in August. “That’s a little too close for me.”

Agreeing. “Me, too.” Marsha said.

“Sherry say how big she thought the field was?”

“She couldn’t say, but later someone told Clyde that the field was about three hundred acres, with some woods outside the south end of the field that, as it turned out… Sherry said, became very well used.”

“What she mean by that?”

“Doubted it!” Sherry said. But a hundred and fifty mobile toilets ‘might’ have been adequate for thirty thousand people, but for a half million?”

“And people have to poop somewhere.”

“Clyde said the field was three hundred acres, that’s a pretty big field.”

“Yeah, it was. Sherry said that they’d put up a fence, but whatever kind of fence they’d put up was knocked down immediately when hundreds of people tore through to get in. And that’s when the organisers had to ‘give up’ on who did or did not have a ticket so almost a half million people attended Woodstock for free.

“Anyway…” Marsha going on “… the parking monitor seeing Sharon and Clyde unload the Ford— into a wagon with the tent, kitchen utensils and a butane stove — packaged and dry food enough for four days remained locked in the car to be used as needed. The guy suggested that they situate themselves on the far south-western area of the field. Where… Sherry told me, they could still see some open areas that had clusters of small tents and lean-too’s. But by the time her and Clyde got to where the guy in the parking lot told them to try, there were dozens more people claiming some small bit of space.

So the open spot they found was between and as far from the southern and eastern rows of a hundred toilets as possible. And it still stunk.”

“Where was the stage, and how far away?”

Turning onto her side, cupping her head within her palm, facing me.

“The stage… ‘a huge thing’, Sherry said, was still being constructed on the far northern end of the field, facing to the south so the entertainers would have minimum sun in their eyes — and too far away for her and Clyde to see anything, so they figured on joining the mob and edging forward when the music started— hoping no one would swipe their stuff.”

“Was it still drizzling?”

“No. Sherry told me the clouds had finally broken and it was getting sunny and hot, and muggy and really ‘buggy’.

“Didn’t look like they had much of a choice, but were they okay sitting where they were?”

Westlake Lake

Secured to one of Landings finger docks.

2:29 PM

Anxiously wanting to hear what this innocent appearing; giving for her age, still beautiful seventy-seven year old woman had to do with ‘Morning Lust’ at Woodstock back in nineteen sixty-nine.

“Of course…” Marsha whispered sincerely 

“...I promise!”

2:30 PM

 “ Remember, Marcie, I was thirty-five years old back then and had known only one man: Clyde, my husband, and never!

I never Imagined I’d do or what I did and allowed this ‘boy’ to do. But when Lust handed the joint to me…” thinking a moment “...No he didn’t hand it to me, but brought the joint to my lips telling me not to drag deeply, just a little and hold it in for as long as I can.

When my lips felt the moisture of Lust’s saliva, I remember myself feeling weak, and wanting to… Excuse me, Marsha, but I wanted to bring this beautiful, maybe nineteen year old boy’s cock to my mouth and…” breath quickening.

D’know if the grass could have worked that fast, but looking at Lust; the hair on his arms standing as though effected by static electricity, was shimmering like molten gold. His face and long blonde hair appearing as though he were awaiting a halo and, oh, my God! How I wanted to hold him and love him… The mother in me that I never could be, became overwhelming and I wanted this golden boy in my arms….” Looking at Marsha “This ‘only’ between you and me! Right?”

“Of course! yes! And maybe that stuff you smoked was something other than plain maharajah…” Marsha said “...or something was mixed into it, because maharajah just doesn’t work that fast. A contact high, maybe?”

“I guess they must have been testing the loudspeakers— that earlier Clyde and I had counted sixteen on high poles scattered about the field, because there suddenly cane this terrible echoing screeching sound that lasted for about six or seven seconds. Then, other than the low mummer of the thousands of people tightly situated about the north end of the field, came the loud rocking sound of one of the local bands that must have brought their equipment in the night before, or early today before the road shut down.

Whatever this armature group was playing sounded unintelligible due…” Sharon said “...to the comparable weakness of their armature electric equipment, that came screeching over the sixteen scattered loudspeakers. That nonetheless got people onto their feet, pumping their arm sand dancing...as best one can dance within a hundred thousand pressing bodies.

After their set of four garbled songs another group took the stage. Then another and another throughout that day and night as — causing a contact high, the heavy scent of maharajah lay over the forward, northern end of the cow-field as though a thin layer of fog. While what lay over the not quite so jammed, far southern end of the field was the scent of shit.

I guess getting tired of looking at Autumn Dawn’s squirming tits. “Come ’on!” Standing, taking my hands, Clyde brought me to my feet. “Let’s take a walk. Bring back some chow.”

Speaking to Lust. “Okay if we leave our stuff here?”

“Of course…” Autumn Dawn said “...long as you’ve got the food, we’re not going anywhere.”

“Why’d I feel I could trust that kid? The woman, though?”

“Maybe…” Marsha said “...you were stoned on whatever and, like the lady said, you’ve got the food.”

“As Clyde and me began across the southern end of the field to the parking lot, the rain starting again, the field, very quickly becoming a sea of mud.

But yet we could still hear the distorted sound of music, of sorts, and the inebriated singing and shouting of those hundred thousand, or more, northern, front end people.

Approaching the parking area; so they’d be able to see above the heads of everyone in the field, assuming it was their own vehicles, Clyde and me could see people sitting on the roof tops of cars and small trucks and standing and dancing on the roofs of the many…” looking at Marsha “...Volkswagen Vans.”

“While it’s still raining? Actually dancing on the roofs of cars?”

“So stoned maybe, not caring if they’d fall. The parking lot people were having their own party in the parking lot.”

“On the roofs of cars!”

“Yeah! And on the roofs of cars, they were able to see the stage better than almost all those people in the field.”

Coming closer to our station wagon— expecting to see people on top of it’s flat roof, we were surprised to see there was no one, but now we were able to see the road that we came in on this morning and saw it was, from north to south, as far as Clyde and me could see, completely blocked wit cars, trucks and vans, leaving the narrownesst space on the soft shoulder and into the weeds for another vehicle to slip through.

As we got to the station wagon, a fresh-faced couple into, we thought, their early twenties, wearing Woodstock’s uniform of the day, approached us.

“This your car?” The young man asked.

Unlocking the trunk, “Yes.” Clyde said.

“Dottie, here…” jerking his thumb towards the homely young woman standing slightly to the rear “...and me don’t want to cause no damage..” speaking in classic New York Brooklyneze “… and we’re willing to pay you…” holding two twenty dollar bills forward “...if you give us permission to us your roof for the next few days.”

Incredulously, “To live on it?” I asked.

“Yeah…” Dottie said, holding a medium size cardboard box forward “..we’ve a blanket to sit on so…”

“We won’t scratch it.” The young man said.

“And we’ve sandwiches and Twinkies enough so won’t…” smiling “...make a fire on it.”

“Looking around, Marcie, I could see where the elevated roof of our old Ford wagon, parked far enough before the mobile toilets, but close enough for easy use, and certainly close enough to the stage to, at least, see whoever was preforming.”

“You’ll stay there…” jerking his thumb upward “...until this whole thing is over?”

“One of us will!” Dottie said emphatically.

“Okay…” taking the forty bucks “...it’s a deal!” Clyde said.

Next: Watergate Four: Abandoning Civilisation.