Notation: The Woodstock Music Festival began on August 15, 1969, as half a million people waited on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, for the three-day music festival to start.
35,000 people were expected, instead, approximately 450,000 people attended...
Woodstock 10
Into the Crowd
Westlake Village, California
March 19, 2011
5:45 PM
The small boat gliding alongside the Lipensky dock.
Stepping ashore… “You want me to keep talking?” Sharon asked, throwing the two half hitches about the two deck cleats.
Thoroughly intrigued by Sharon’s Woodstock story, and in particular her admission of the time spent with the man/boy person she knew as Morning Lust.
“You’ve got me hooked. Yes, please!”
6:12 PM
Bringing an icy pitcher of lemon aid along with a tray of assorted crackers and cheese. Setting both onto the boat’s small table, the two old women sitting across from each other.
“Where was I?” Sharon questioned.
“Besides the music, you were still into the Hippies and their reasons for coming to Woodstock.”
Thinking a moment. “Oh, yeah!” Remembering.
Woodstock Festival of Music and Love
Bethal, New York
August 12, 1969
8:09 Am
“Come on people! Smile at your brother. Let’s all get together. Try to love one another right now!”
Echoing through the sixteen temporary speakers scattered throughout the three hundred acre field.
It was indescribable, all those thousands of 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...
The energy and warmth that came from those young people hitting Sharon Abrams as being far warmer that the, by that time, humid, eighty- five degree weather.
The light rain changing to humid mist as Sharon and the young man known as Lust made their way to the Murphy station wagon.
8:15 AM
Their breakfast of a cold Egg-O and a cup of warm cherry Cool-Aid finished, they decided to make their way across the field to see how the pavilion construction was coming along.
Moving from the Murphy’s old station wagon that now sat within a jumble of hundreds of haphazardly deserted vehicles of all descriptions.
Having no idea who reached for and took the others hand, seventeen year old Franklin Binkowski AKA twenty year old Morning Lust, and thirty-five year old Sharon Abrams AKA Sharon Murphy began their twisting, slow manoeuvring journey within and between the thousands of closely seated, or still sleeping Woodstock attendees.
About Sharon: When meeting Sharon in her later years, more often than not, one’s first thought was, Can’t even imagine what this old lady looked like in her younger years.
At the Woodstock Festival of Music and Love, in 1969 Sharon, at age thirty-five was in her comparatively younger years, and in a word was ‘beautiful’.
About Franklin: Always a beautiful child. At his true age of seventeen, with the flush of youth,
Franklin Binkowski was the other matching bookend of the woman who’s hand he held.
Tall, light complected, blue eyed with long— attempting to show ‘some’ hippie culture; Lust had light blonde hair to his shoulders, that now, thanks to his mother, was neatly tied into a short pony-tail.
In addition to being a beautiful young man, Franklin’s one other, literally, outstanding feature was…
8:31 AM
Closely passing between sitting women and men, within moments of entering the tightly packed field, looking upward as Lust stepped between two, possibly eighteen year old outlandishly dressed, or undressed hippie girls.
Openly staring at the minimally exposed foreskin of the young man’s penis showing from beneath the left thigh length leg of Lust’s shorts.
Warm. Physically and mentally warm. “Hi!” One of the girls said, holding a lit joint upward. “Have a hit!”
Which Lust did, then handing the joint to Sharon, she took the first of many hits on this, the second day at the Woodstock Festival of Music and Love.
Notation: Forty -two years into the future, Marsha Lipensky asked Sharon Abrams: “You think he knew?”
His dick was hanging out?”
“Yeah.”
Sharon and Marsha’s eyes meeting. “No doubt!” Sharon said.
Woodstock
8:46 Am
Very hot, humid and buggy. People throughout the field in various stages of clothing, or unclothing.
Openly staring at the exposed foreskin of the young man’s penis showing from beneath the left, thigh length leg of his shorts.
“Hi!” The possibly twenty year old woman said, “I’m Molly.” Leaning forward enough for the two standing above to see her sagging breasts beneath the sweaty, loose fitting Ti-die T-shirt, as handing a lit joint upward. “Have a hit!”
“Thank’'s, Molly.”
8:54 AM
Within another few twisting, turning minutes, another joint held upward was excepted.
This time by an older guy to Sharon, who’s summer weight dress… As she’d expected, drenched in humidity and sweat clung to her fully outlined adult body like a second layer of filmy skin.
In normal conditions, which in the mind of this seemingly timid, middle aged hardware store owner from Cincinnati, Ohio, the Woodstock Festival of Music and Love was as far from normal as stepping out of the darkness into a land of glorious technicolor…
Even though the morning was dark and dreary with off and on drizzle.
Sharon’s mind replaying: Your old man smoked and drank and even fucked my mother.
As though knowing what Clyde had in mind when he’d said:“What happens at Woodstock…” Sharon’s husband had emphatically stated,“... stays in Woodstock.”
Clyde fucked his mother!
Okay, buster!
Skipping a bra and panties.
As she had expected! Drenched in humidity and sweat — because Clyde liked it ‘bushy’, Sharon’s vulva and pubic hair visibly embossing the light weight summer dress clingingly outlining her adult body as though a second layer of filmy skin.
My husband fucked his mother?
Okay, buster!
It was Sharon’s hand that took hold of Lusts.
9:04 AM
Slowly squirming their way through the massive crowd, the tall, handsome young man and beautiful, obviously older woman …
That to people close enough to see. Close enough to notice, Lust and Sharon appeared as symbols of understanding and love between their two different generations.
Westlake Village, California
March 19, 2011
6:36 PM
“Wait a minute!” Marsha said. “You telling me that little miss innocence…” tapping Sharon on the chest “...walked through that…? Maze of thousands of people practically naked?”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly naked.”
“Weren't exactly dressed either.”
Other than a small chunk of Swiss cheese, the two had polished off most of the crackers along with all the cheese, other than what was left of the Swiss, that at the moment Sharon was cutting into.
Remembering her first day as a nudist at Elysium Fields way back in nineteen-eighty-six. “You weren’t embarrassed?”Marsha asked.
“Yeah. Maybe. I suppose I night have been. But I was still angry…” Biting into the slice of Swiss “… because of what Lust had told me about my husband fucking his mother, and I wanted to do something outlandish! So I had thought, it’s only a dress, after all. and if the rain starts again? Well, I’m not God, after all.”
“No bra and panties adding to the still beautiful older woman illusion, huh?”
Thinking a moment. “Marcie, when I started squeezing my way through all those sweaty people…?
I don’t know! Maybe it was those first those first hits of grass. Or the grey haze of smoke from a hundred thousand lit joints floating just over our heads?
Was I embarrassed?” Shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe deep down I wanted to show those kids that an older woman can still be beautiful.”
Taking Marsha’s hand. “No conceit intended, Marcie, but I damn well knew I was still beautiful. And then…”
Hesitating, Marsha’s hand still held within Sharon’s hand.
“You know when I was in High school…” her tone of voice causing Marsha to make and hold eye contact “...I won two beauty pageants.”
“I saw the pictures. You were… still are beautiful, Sherry.”
“After I won the second contest, I had acting ambitions, and began taking an acting class… Then my dad died and Clyde’s father couldn’t handle the store by himself, so Clyde took it over and he couldn’t handle things by himself…”
“He could have hired help!”
“He did. But the guy wasn’t the brightest bulb and Clyde still needed help…”
“So he asked you to marry him and go to work in a damn hardware store!” Marsha said angrily.
“I loved Clyde! I’d always loved him, and both our families lived off the store.” Looking imploringly at Marsha “So what could I do?”
Sighing, “Don’t really know.”
“Ever since I won those contests and married Clyde and became a partner in that fucking hardware store…” stated empathically, emotively “...everything in my life seemed to come to a stop. To become anticlimactic; as though I’d been waiting for something different to happen. To change from the life I’d been living that never did…
Well…” her tone softening “...until you and Mitch came along and introduced me to Milt.”
“Hey! What are we doing for dinner?” Milt called from the Lipensky deck.
“Hold on Milt!” Marsha called back.
“You want to stop talking now?”
“No. The things that happened at Woodstock, at least between Clyde and me, always stayed at Woodstock. Once we left and got home, we never spoke of any of it again. But things happened there that have been on my conscience for forty-two years, and it feels good to get to get it off my chest.”
“Hey, Milt! Why don’t you and Mitch… Where’s Mitch?”
“Bathroom.”
“Why don’t you guys go out for pizza, and bring Sharon and me one when
you come home.”
“Had a taste for pizza anyway!” Mitchell, whom apparently had returned from the bathroom said.
“Okay.” Marsha said, adding emphatically. “Go then!”
“What the hell could you two old broads find all that interesting to spend all day yapping about?”
“You’d be surprised, Milt!” Sharon said.
Waiting a minute or two…
Hearing the motor of the old Lincoln start.
“I can certainly see how a thing like Woodstock could take you out of your anticlimactic life.”
“Before the music started… For the two days before the concert started it was different from anything I’d ever imagined: ugly and muddy and sweat and shit stinky, and buggy…”
“And then there was the good looking blonde guy with the long dick and all that maharajah, and walking around practically naked sure as hell was different.”
About to slice into what was left of the cheese again.
Changing her mind, putting the slicer down.
"Marcie, you remember the scene when Dorthy…”
“ ‘Dorthy’?”
“From the Wizard of Oz.."
So far out of context. “The Wizard of Oz?” Marsha questioned.
“Yeah! You remember when Dorthy wakes up and everything had turned from black and white to technicolor, and there were all those happy,
singing, uh…?”
“Munchkins.”
“Yeah, Munchkins.” Sharon repeated.
“Of course Oz-land and Munchkins could have been because of one hell of a contact high from that grey haze of smoke from a hundred thousand lit joints.”
“I’ve no doubt it was, but the kids… Most of the young people there were far different than they’d been pictures; so unbelievably friendly.”
“So unbelievably stoned also.”
“Yeah, more than likely.
Anyway Lust and I figured we were about as close to the stage that we were ever going to be able to get to, and we were still about, what looked to be twenty thousand people away, when two couples on a spread blanket asked if Lust and me would care to sit for a while, moving themselves into a tight semi-circle to make room for us.
Woodstock
9:05 Am
“Sure…” squatting into a cross legged sitting position… the head of his penis conveniently exposed “...why not.” Lust said, as coincidentally the girls — appearing to be no older than sixteen or possibly seventeen situated themselves closely to either side of him.
Shrugging her shoulders, Sharon also sat; with her bent knees held tightly before her with both men— appearing to be no younger than thirty-five or forty sat closely to either side.
Greasy hair tied into scraggly ponytails, smelling their dirty, mildew and sweat scents.
Not quite knowing how to tell Lust she didn’t care to sit with these people.
One of the girls asked if they’d like to share a joint…
So, of course, Lust and Sharon — loath to put her lips upon the dampened joint where one of the, to Sharon, slimy guys had his lips but, manners dictating, having no choice, Sharon did.
In addition to the loud hammering and screeching construction noises; as the road was completely impassable from both directions, there was also the near constant thumping of helicopters coming, landing and lifting off leaving the musicians heavy equipment.
Wanting to get up and leave these young girls and slimy guys but, after four hits of maharajah, too mellow and unsteady to fight her way through the tightly constricted mass of people, watching whatever could be seen of the work being done on the pavilion, along with the sound and sight of the helicopters coming and going.
From somewhere, didn’t have any idea where it started, but someone in the mob began strumming a guitar, singing… Amazing Grace… and from somewhere else, God knows how far away...Amazing Grace… the lyrics were picked up and then someone else and someone else…
Then another song and another until they had a huge stereophonic concert raging throughout field with a couple hundred thousand people singing along.
Apparently finding Lust and Sharon interesting enough to keep around, and offering them hits from their next joint.
“You been to White Lake yet?” one of the guys asked.
“No. Didn’t even know there was a lake nearby.” Sharon said.
“Yeah! Little town of White Lake…” nodding her head to the right “... has a really beautiful lake just outside of town…”
“With a couple of very private tributaries, where people…”
“If you want to go skinny-dipping.” Moving a little closer to Lust, the second girl said.
Touching Sharon’s knee, startling her. “If you want to go skinny -dipping, baby...” the guy that had handed her the joint said with a snarky leer “...I’ll ‘see’ you there!”
Thinking, Not on your life!
Knowing the four couldn’t leave their spot, because as soon as so much as an elbow was moved, another would take it’s place.
Sweaty and still dabbed with dried Calamine Lotion from yesterdays mosquito and chigger bites, ‘oh, yeah’! Sharon absolutely wanted to go for a swim!
And stoned as she was, skinny-ipping… glancing a Lust’s somewhat ‘accidentally’ exposed penis… didn’t sound too bad, at all!
Next: Woodstock 11: Franklin & Sharon
