Woodstock 9, The Need

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

November 18, 1963

Knowing her and her twelve year old son would be entering an extremely taboo, incestuousness stage of their lives, and as becoming pregnant with her son’s baby was a thing the mother did not want to happen, later that day Margery called the ‘whoreish’ of her old high school girlfriends, asking the name of a Chicago Obstetrician that could do the job quickly, requiring none of the paperwork demanded for a woman her age requesting this type of life altering surgery in Conservative Wisconsin.

Within the next week, flying to Liberal Illinois, spending on night in the Chicago hospital, thirty-seven year old Margery Binkowski had a Tubal Ligation.

Woodstock Festival of Music and Love

Bethal, New York

August 12, 1969

6:28 AM

Hardly able to get the words out. “Clyde… My husband fucked your mother?” Cocking her head backward. “She’s your mother?” Asked incredulously from within Sharon’s shimmering atmosphere of THC induced maharajah smoke.

Spreading his legs. Leaning back. His eyes half closed as his hips jerked — once, twice, three, four times within the rhythm of Sharon’s hand.

“Yeah…” suddenly sitting up and leaning forward, his penis pulling from Sharon’s hand, seventeen year old Franklin Binkowski AKA twenty year old Morning Lust said, “… she’s my mother.” as he ejaculated onto the sodden ground. —

Westlake Lake Village, California

March 19, 2011

5:02 PM

Intrigued by Sharon’s Woodstock story, and particularity the admission of her time with the man/boy person she knew as ‘Morning Lust’.

No longer secured to one of Landings finger docks, Marsha navigating the party boat about the south-eastern point of Westlake Island— the long way back to their homes.

“He just came again? Just like that?”

Giggling. “At first I thought he was just that hot for me…” Sharon said “… but it turned out Lust had a very serious premature ejaculation problem.”

“That you probably weren’t helping to solve.”

Both women drunk on six glasses of wine each, and stoned on the sharing of Marsha’s heavenly marijuana infused cookie.

“Well, yeah, his coming that fast..”

“And easily.”

“He said he was twenty; not that I really believed him, but he was an absolutely beautiful man…”

“Or possibly still a big boy.”

“Didn’t want to even think that.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Anyway, at that time I was still thinking about my husband fucking his mother.” Repeating, “His ‘mother’!”

“He brought his mother to Woodstock?”

“Learned a lot about his mother…”

“Autumn Dawn.”

Moving alongside Marsha. “Yeah. That’s what she called herself, but as it turned out it was his mother that brought her son to Woodstock.”

“Probably to help solve his premature coming problem with one or two of those wild hippie ladies.”

“Lust never said. But he did solve his problem.”

Quiet a moment. “With you?” Marsha asked.”

Quiet a moment. “‘oh, yeah’!”

“That good?”

“Absolutely…” meaning it “... memorable!”

“Lust or Woodstock?”

“I think mostly Woodstock.

You know, Clyde was getting into this new ‘Rock and Roll’ music and me, I was still a ‘big band’ girl and neither of us much cared for the kids that were into it. We hated the outlandish way they dressed and the guys letting their hair grow, and most of all— Clyde and me hated us being in Vietnam! But being patriotic Americans, we also hated their ‘peace marches’ and their absolute hatred and disrespect for Nixon then Johnson because they thought Nixon never should have gotten us into it, and because Johnson wouldn’t get us out of it, and instituted—like the World War Two draft, when a guy had to sign up for when he was eighteen — Clyde and me hated when they publicly burned their draft cards.”

“Yeah, I remember Mitch and me watching all that on television, and we felt the same as you and Clyde.”

“Then…” Sharon went on “...when — who the kids considered to be the ‘peace makers’ — Martin Luther King was killed in April of sixty-eight and, almost to the day, two months later, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, it was like their two ‘peace makers’ were murdered and the whole generation of young people went off the deep end and, music becoming their culture, they figured, ‘screw our parents and the fucking politicians!’ We’ll listen to any music we damn well want and dress and look however we damn well want! And everything they did was their way of protesting! Their way telling the ‘grownups’ that got us into that fucking war…” speaking rapidly and passionately “...to go fuck themselves!”

“Amazing you remember all that stuff after, uh…”

“Forty-two years…” Sharon said. “...and even the reason for Woodstock is coming back to me.”

“For the music?”

“Yes, but for so much more.

Never seen so many people in one place at the same time in my life.

They thought that if they could peacefully bring so many people together at the same time, possibly they could help heal our nation, and they…”

“They?”

“Four friends that had started a small recording studio: the original people that put Woodstock together, and they got so much more than anyone could remotely expect.

They wanted to hold a concert where young people, the so called Hippies could go and not feel like misfits. Where they could be with other people that loved what they loved. Their music, maharajah, the freedom to be themselves without criticism. To be on the other side of the Vietnam debate without criticism from the ‘others’.”

“The others?”

At the time, you and Mitchell, Clyde and me; their so called ‘Establishment’’, to become what the young people called, ‘The Counter Culture’, with music and maharajah becoming their liberation.”

5:35 PM

Coming up to the Lipensky dock, Marsha was so intrigued with Sharon’s first hand history of Woodstock, that instead of gliding alongside the dock, roughy hitting the corner, momentum turning the small boat so it  coincidentally glided alongside.

Stepping ashore… “You want me to keep going?” Sharon asked, throwing the two half hitches about the two deck cleats.

“Yeah! Please!”

“Okay, got to pee, so be right back.”

“And I’ll dig up some noshies.”

“If the guys want to, tell ‘em we’re talking ‘girl talk’ and they're not invited because everything I'll be telling you is still top secrete.”

5:47 PM

“Where was I?” Sharon questioned.

Bringing an icy pitcher of lemon aid along with a tray of crackers and cheese. Setting both onto the boat’s small table, the two old women sitting across from each other. “You were still into the Hippies and their reasons for going to Woodstock.”

Slicing a thin slice of Swiss cheese and putting it onto a Ritz Cracker. “Oh, yeah! Lust put on a pair of shorts…” laughing “...so short that the tip of his dick hung out whenever he took a step.”

“You think he knew?”

That his dick was hanging our?”

“Yeah.”

Sharon and Marsha’s eyes meeting. “No doubt!” Sharon said, biting into the crispy cracker.

“The rain had stopped, so I slipped into the lightest, sleeveless summer weight dress I’d brought along…”

“You wearing bra and panties then”?

Marsha and Sharon’s eyes meeting again. “Of course not! And I want to tell you that that light weight dress became ‘really’ clingy when I began to sweat.” Sharon said.

“We were both hungry, so headed towards our Ford wagon to rustle something up for breakfast.

The Couple that gave Clyde and me forty busks to use the roof of the wagon as their balcony, had put a blanket on the roof to keep their two web lawn recliners on it from scratching it were awake; both wearing those ‘street guard’ type rain coats, apparently in good spirits, said, ‘Good morning’.

Lust and me each had a cold ‘Egg-O’ and a cup of warm cherry ‘Cool-Aid’, then decided to squirm our way across the field to see how the stage construction was coming.

Must have been anther fifty thousand people that came during the night because there wasn’t a foot of earth from where we stood that there wasn’t a tent, lean-too or even a tepee.”

“They do anything about the toilets?”

“Yeah. There must be roads through the woods because somehow they got through and… uh, did whatever they do to get rid yesterdays shit — although with today's lines forming outside of all hundred-fifty Andy Gumps, looked like they’d be full of new shit really soon.

“How’s about the town’s people?”

“The people of that little town were fantastic. They’d stand on their porches or even come to the road welcoming and shaking hands with the odd dressed hippies, and waving at the non-ending stream of cars, busses and artsy painted Volkswagen’s until the roads leading to the field— for miles in both directions became so completely jammed that the kids were just deserting them, leaving them sit wherever they were stopped, and grabbing whatever gear they’d brought, began to hike to the field.

From where Clyde and I had parked, looking in both directions, for as far as Lust and me could see there was a huge jumble of deserted vehicles, along with the endless throng of singing, guitar playing walking people.

Eating our cold and warm break feast as we walked. Coming over a rise in the ground… Oh, my, Gd, Marcie! It was a mind- bending spectacle!

Beyond the… Had to be what appeared to be at least a solid quarter mile of people, their sound coming to us as a loud, buzzing humm.

In the distance we could see the long stage along with two… I’d say at least twenty feet high, wood and steel beam structures that, we found out later, would be holding the festivals huge loudspeakers that — eliminating all feed-back, we were able to clearly hear a half mile away, so can’t imagine what it did to the ears that mob of hundreds of thousands people standing closer to the stage.

It was non-describable, all those people thinking as they each thought, their independence of belief, their freedom of thought without criticism from the ‘establishment’. All feeling that the guy or gal standing or sitting alongside was a brother or sister, and the love...

Marcie, the energy and warmth that came from those young people hit me as being far warmer that the, by then eighty degree weather.

“Come on people! Smile at your brother. Let’s all get together. Try to love one another right now!”

Music started from somewhere in front of, or possibly from the unfinished stage as thousands of voices picked up the lyrics and — arms waving in conjunction with the music, began to sing as one.

I never knew there were this many people in one place, at one time in the world, and now all these young people, standing side by side, swaying, arms waving, singing as one.

Unable to sell tickets, the fences trampled, people streaming onto the field in uncountable numbers.

What had started as a money making business venture no longer was, as people that had purchased tickets could still be on the road five miles away, and what could they do; tell hundreds of thousands of people to leave and come back when the fences were reconstructed to buy ticket?

As far away as Lust and I were, we could hear the distinct voice coming across the field telling the crowd: “This is a free concert now! It wasn’t meant to be, but your welfare and enjoyment is more important.”

Notation: Taking ‘Woodstock Festival of Music and Love’, to what began as a capitalistic venture, to that of a liberated concert for most of this generation of young people.

Next: Woodstock 10: Into the Crowd