Woodstock 21: Repercussions
Woodstock Festival of Music and Love
Bethel, New York
Quotation: “Woodstock was a spark of beauty where half-a-million kids saw that they were part of a greater organism.”
According to Michael Lang, one of four young men who formed Woodstock Ventures to produce the festival.
“That’s what means the most to me – the connection to one another felt by all of us who worked on the festival, all those who came to it, and the millions who couldn’t be there but were touched by it.”
Notation: Woodstock, the legendary music festival taking place on the cow field of a dairy farm located in the foothills of the Catskill mountains was also a miserable manure infused mud pit containing not the expected 35,000 attendees but approximately 450,000 people that remained throughout the scattered rain and storm term of the three day festival…
At least until the unexpected fourth day.
Woodstock Day 3 – August 17, 1969
Realising how serious Sharon was. “It wasn’t you taking advantage…” Franklin said “... it was me that took advantage…”
”Yeah, sure!” Shaking her head negatively. “You think any court would buy that?”
Shrugging his shoulders. “Don’t know.”
“Do me a favour, Franklin; or whatever your damn name is!” Her voice rising. “Get the hell out of here and leave me alone!” Adding. “And the next time you feel like getting fucked…” her fists pounding on his shoulders, shoving him out of the tent “... fuck that incestuous bitch you call mother!
2:00 PM
Day three began around 2:00 PM. Joe Crocker was the first musician to perform. The remaining line up included:
Sunday, August 17 – Monday, August 18
Joe Cocker and The Grease Band
2:00 pm – 3:25 pm
After Joe Cocker's set, a thunderstorm disrupted the events for several hours leaving four hundred-fifty thousand people sitting in thickening mud, sheltering themselves as best they could.
3:40 PM
On Sunday afternoon another brutal thunderstorm swept in widening the sea of dredged up muddy manure.
Squirming their way forward for better viewing position, as the cold rain began, drenched to the bone, Clyde Murphy and Margery Binkowski AKA Autumn Dawn returned to find his wife and her son – shrouded in blankets, huddled inside their respective shelters.
Pulling the orange – used throughout Franklin’s four years of high school– raincoat hood from about his head, “I hate this and wanna go home!” Seventeen year old Franklin Binkowski AKA Morning Lust whined. “I wanna go home!”
Knowing he’d actually fucked that bitch in the tent at least twice, and God only knows how many of those hippie cunts. “Sure! Fine!” The mother’s sexual edification mission for her son accomplished.
“Okay with me!” Shivering as Margery changed into dry clothing. “Let’s get the fuck out of this God-damned stinking mud pit!”
Abandoning their lean-to and whatever garbage they’d accumulated, without so much as a word or a parting gesture, within minutes Autumn Dawn and Morning Lust sloshed their way through the mud to wherever they’d left their vehicle…
Never again to be seen or heard from.
Clyde and Sharon each in their own cots, wrapped in whatever blankets she had thought to bring, the husband and wife wordlessly waited, until...
6:30 PM
Country Joe and the Fish
6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Country Joe McDonald's second performance from
8:15 pm – 9:15 pm
10:00 PM
The Band
10:00 pm – 10:50 pm
Called back for an encore.
Monday, 8/18/69
Midnight
Johnny Winter
Midnight – 1:05 am
Winter's brother, Edgar Winter, featured on three songs is called back for an encore.
1:30 AM
Blood, Sweat & Tears
1:30 am – 2:30 am
3:00 AM
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
3:00 am – 4:14 am
4:24 AM
Neil Young
An acoustic and electric set planned, Neil Young skipped most of the acoustic set.
4:24 AM
4:24 am – 5:38 am
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
6:00 AM
Cold and hungry, Sharon and Clyde Murphy– having nothing to say, wordlessly shared their last joint.
Notation: This the last time Sharon Murphy AKA Sharon Abrahams had maharajah in any form until offered a half cookie on 3/19/2011 when: “Didn’t know if you’d approve… But while Mitch was in pain waiting for his operation, Si came over with some of, what he called, ‘medicated cookies’.”
“Medicated!” Sharon laughed. “Medicated with what?”
“Maharajah.” Hesitating. “Don’t know if you’ve ever had any.”
‘You didn’t know if I’d approve?” The petite woman said. “And you’re wondering if I’d ever smoked pot?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Marsha, I’m seventy seven now and was thirty-five in ‘sixty-nine’.”
“ ‘Sixty-nine’?” Having no idea why. “What’s ‘sixty-nine’ have to do with anything.”
“Oh, Baby…” laughing, her eyes rolling upward “... ‘Woodstock’! Marcie,! Clyde and me were at Woodstock in ‘sixty-nine! And you want to know if I’d ‘ever’ smoked pot?”
Woodstock: Monday, 8/18/69
Technical and weather delays causing the festival to stretch into Monday morning.
7:30 AM
Sha Na Na
7:30 am to...
7:45 AM
Rain once again pounding the tent.
Sharon still inside the tent. Still wrapped within a blanket in effort to retain a semblance of warmth.
“Clyde, I’m freezing! And I’m tired and dirty and have had more than enough of this fucking place and your danced music! ‘I want to go home’! ’Now’!”
Within the tents opening, a rain slicker covering from head to knees. “Now?” Clyde complained. “ ‘Now’, before Hendrix!”
“Yeah ‘now’!” She angrily yelled. “You don’t even know when he’s coming on – if he ‘ever’ comes on, and I want to get the hell out of here before all those people decide to leave, because God only knows how, and how long it’s going to take us to even get out of that shitty place we’re parked.
Having the sense that ‘whatever happened in
Woodstock would not really be staying in Woodstock’. Shouting back, “Okay!” Clyde yelled. “Let’s pack the fuck up!”
8:20 AM
Locating the old Ford Station Wagon was no problem, however moving it became a major problem.
The two young people using the Station Wagon’s roof as box seats long gone.
A water soaked note shoved between the left wiper blade and window, soggily read, ‘Thank you!’
Notation: Jimmy Hendrix had been given the opportunity to go on at midnight, but Hendrix opted to be the closer– where he performed to a considerably smaller crowd of fewer then an estimated 35,000 people who witnessed Hendrix’s immortal performance of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’.
9:00 AM
Finally: Jimmy Hendrix/ Gypsy Sun & Rainbows
9:00 am – 11:10 am
8:30 AM – 9:15 AM
The motor running. The Heater running. The Ford Station Wagon unable to budge in any direction for forty-five minutes– until those vehicles that were able to move, did move for whatever minute distance they could move – as on the road the abandoned vehicles were shoved or hauled into the brush alongside both sides of the road’s soft shoulders by the New York Highway Patrol.
Then, once on the road, taking five inching hours to cover the five miles on the still abandoned vehicle littered road leading from the cow field to US 135.
Westlake Village, California
March 19,2011
11:38 PM
Marsha still speaking of Sharon’s Woodstock saga that had been told to her in the utmost, old woman to old woman confidence – because there was so much that ‘if sober’, Sharon would never have revealed.
Now on his back, their sides still touching, sensing Marsha’s breath onto the side of his face as...
“Sharon said it took at least forty-five minutes before they could even move an inch and then, when they were finally out of that parking area – in order to open the road, there were hundreds of cars and mini-busses that the Highway Patrol had towed or pushed off the road and into the woods in order to open it, and then it took them five hours to travel the five miles onto the highway…”
Waiting a few moments in silence.
Turning his head, facing his wife. “And then?” Mitchell asked.
“That’s it.” Turning her head, facing her husband. “That’s all she said.”
“What about that guy, uh…?”
“ ‘Franklin’.”
“Yeah, Franklin.”
“Sharon never said.”
August 18, 1969 -August 20, 1969
The two day, seven hundred-ten mile trip from Bethal, New York to the suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio– due to Sharon’s on going hatred for even being dragged to Woodstock– aware that any conversation with her husband would have angry tones of recrimination because fully aware of what he’d been doing with, ‘God only knows’ how many of those hippie girls, all of those times he was not with her…
Sharon’s thoughts also foremost on Janis Joplin’s medical advice: to have Clyde checked by a doctor for crabs and clap as soon as possible; the seven hundred-ten mile trip was spent in purposely minimal conversation.
Repercussions
August 21, 1969
“What happens in Woodstock stays in Woodstock…”
Apparently not everything.
In a hardware store in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio
10:20 AM
“Millie, hi. It’s Sharon.
“Hi, Sharon! So how’d you like it?”
“Not really all that much, to be honest, not at all.”
There was a lot of news about it on TV, and Hal and me kept looking for you and Clyde.”
“There were so many people there…”
“Yeah. About a half million they said”
Having a made-up excuse for physical examinations.
“The weather was so lousy…”
“Yeah, TV said it hardly ever stopped raining.”
“Clyde and me may have caught a cold or something, so I’d like to make appointments for us with Doc Moody.”
“Individual or together?”
“Someone’s got to watch the store, so Individually. Me first, please.”
“Let’s see…” Millie said, studying Doctor Moody’s appointment schedule “...How’s about three-thirty this afternoon for you and…” turning a page “… ten-thirty tomorrow for Clyde.”
“Perfect.” Sharon said.
August 21, 1969
3:35 PM
“You want blood and urine tests…” quizzically asked “...for both yourself and Clyde?”
“Yeah, Doc. You can-not believe how filthy ti was there, and who knows what either of us may have caught.”
Saturday August 23, 1969
10:15 AM
‘Murphy’s Hardware’! Good morning.”
“Sharon, good morning. It’s Doctor Moody.”
“ ‘Morning, Doc…” having some idea why this call, her heart thumping “...need some surgical hardware, do you?”
Seriously spoken. “Sharon, I need to see you and Clyde ‘today’.”
“Thought you were closed on Saturdays.”
“I am. That’s why I want to see you and Clyde when Millie’s not around.”
Now knowing what she had suspected to be true . “Be there soon as I can round my husband up.”
10:25 AM
The ‘closed’ sign on the door.
On this blistering hot August day, Clyde and Sharon Murphy quickly walked the one block to their doctors office.
10:35 AM
At his desk. The husband and wife sitting before his desk. “Sorry…” Doctor Moody said “... but I have to ask, have you had sexual relations with each other in the last eight or nine days?”
“No!” Clyde said.
“Not with each other.” Sharon cryptically added.
Picking up on Sharon’s tone of voice. “Good!” Hesitating a long moment. “You’re clear, Sharon, but…” looking accusingly at Clyde “...you’ve a raging case of gonorrhoea!”
Clyde never expecting this. His wife ‘actually’ expecting this.
“What do we do?”
Looking at Sharon. “We’ll handle this as quietly as possible.”
Looking at Clyde. “You’re going to have to be taking weekly injections of antibiotics for quite a while, and because we’re not sure how complicated your case is, I’ll have to experiment with various antibiotics, so, like I said, this can take quite a while.”
As it turned out, ‘quite a while’ meaning that Sharon Murphy would never again have penis to vagina intercourse with her husband, or, as it also turned out, with ‘any-one’ until meeting and marrying Mitchell and Marsha Lipensky’s neighbour and good friend, ‘Milton Abrams’ on 4/20/210.
Regarding future intercourse pertaining to Clyde Murphy…?
Sharon claiming her husband’s death at age sixty-three due to early on Alzheimer's disease triggered by Clyde’s case of Woodstock caused gonorrhoea.
Saturday 8/23/69 t0 Wednesday 9/3/69
A thirty-five year old woman knowing her body, and ‘that’ time of month, thinking there would be at least nine days until the her monthly cramps set in. Why, then, is her stomach bloated, and why then, for the last two mornings was she nauseous when awakening?
Thinking she knew what this meant…
9/4/69
1:50 PM
“Look, Doc…” Sharon said “...I said I hadn’t had intercourse with Clyde…”
“Someone else, then?”
Time to come clean! “Yes. At Woodstock. With a seventeen year old boy. I didn’t know it then because he lied to me and said he was twenty, but was really seventeen.”
“You had sex with a seventeen year old boy!”
“Actually, and please don’t ask, but ‘he’ had sex with me, not me with him.”
Not asking. “Your period?” Doctor Moody did ask.
“I think, still about nine days away.”
Sighing. “So you think you might be pregnant?”
“If I am, it’s been really; ‘really’ only been for less than three weeks.”
“What is it you want from me? And do not mention ‘an abortion’!”
“Dock…” taking a deep breath “... I’m near thirty-six and want a hysterectomy!”
“You’ll never have children, you know.”
Clyde says I can’t conceive anyway…”
“Tell you a secret, you could, you know.”
“Clyde always says it’s me, but I always thought it was his problem.”
“So, if you are pregnant, it’s not Clyde’s.”
“Doesn’t matter, Doc! I’m getting too old and too set in my ways to be a mother by now anyway. And If I should be pregnant, there would absolutely be no resemblance between Clyde and this baby. So, honestly, I’d rather not go through with it.”
“You sure of this, Sharon?”
“Yes.”
“An abortion, ‘no’! A hysterectomy I can manage. When do you want to do this?”
“As soon as possible!”
Notation: So ends this writer’s semi-fictional,‘different slant’ on the Woodstock Festival series.
