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 Post subject: Memories of Woodstock...
PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 12:49 pm
  

BlunderVirgin

Joined: Jul 13, 2009
Posts: 16
Memories of Woodstock.....Sad truth of the matter is I haven't any. I wasn't there, although it certainly wasn't for lack of trying. At the tender age of 14 (YIKES) a girl I knew at the time and I gave it our best shot, plotting and scheming on the phone for two weeks. Her older sister was dating a Harley ridin' guy and the day they left for 'Yasgur's Farm' on the bike, giving themselves two days for a leisurely ride down from Ontario, Canada, we planned to take off hitch-hiking with our back packs stuffed full of life's concert necessities ~ plastic garbage bags; munchies; baby-sitting money; change of skivvies.... We didn't have tickets but figured we could get some there (turns out our plan wasn't totally messed). We really thought we were on our way to the hugest event known in the history of our young lives until we got off the city bus which dropped us closest to the highway, only to find her father waiting!! "Get in the car, NOW"...BUSTED. Turns out he'd been monitoring our progress on the extension phone at their house.
My penitent young self was promptly delivered over to my justifiably horrified/furious/relieved/ parents who didn't buy my "going to a family party" argument - Mom's maiden name of Woodstock - how do you live up to that? GROUNDED from the Wednesday before the big event until the Tuesday after Labor Day, 1969, when I started high school - Separate School - complete with uniforms and members of the clergy to help guide me into adulthood. I might add that NO ONE, ANYWHERE grounded like my Mom, no phone, no radio, no t.v., no sitting on the porch, zero contact with the outside world...total bummer at 14. : (
The following year when the movie was released, I went to the local drive-in with some friends in a van and we took our own 'snacks', spread blankets on the ground and got as close as we could to feeling of the event. Of course, like every other young hippie chick at the time, I fell immediately and hopeless in love with images of a very young, 'totally groovy' ADG, high on the whole scene and 'rappin' about rappin' with the fuzz'. He blew all of our minds with the vibe he exuded in the movie.
When the movie became available in an at 'home forum', a more mature version of myself had an anniversary Woodstock movie night every year with a friend from 'back in the day'. We then added in 'The Last Waltz' and 'Alice's Restaurant' and 'Billy Jack' and made a weekend of it. Great nostalgic fun.
Looking back on it, all I can think now is 'my poor parents'. God love them. If either of my wonderful, now adult children had even dreamed about such a venture at 14, I would have had heart failure!! Lord knows when my 25-year-old daughter left for Australia on a 10-month working visa adventure, I didn't sleep through the night once until she was back home.
ADG is totally right...you just can't make this stuff up! : ) HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to everyone who gets it.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 6:30 pm
  

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Welcome MaggieMae (my youngest daughter's name is Maggie May) to Blunderland :D That's a great story you've got there......thanks for the memories!!! I like your tradition of getting together and re-living the old flicks......very cool 8) Peace, Kevin


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 9:35 pm
  

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Joined: Feb 19, 2008
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Ha, great story Maggie. Oh my, what a grounding you would have had if you had gone to the show and then they found out about it.

My wife and I went to see the movie Taking Woodstock yesterday. I won't spoil it, but will recomend it. It was fun.

I was 11 that summer, and loved the music on the radio from the concert. I could relate to it all, even at 11. When the movie came out it was crazy, all the mud and mess, and bummers. But the over riding message of all those people coming together with common goal of love, peace, and music was truth, and it is beautiful.

Never to be again.

My friend and I thumbed our way from Cali to upstate NY 6 years later. All summer long in '75, right after graduating. More of the same kind of love on our trip. And I do mean trip. All the way across our big country. Through the sierras, rockies, down south, up the east coast. It was a full on trip the whole way. People, complete strangers, took us in to their homes and fed and sheltered us, like long lost friends. Parents and young people alike, treated us royaly.

That was a joyful time. Some say that our world is different now. I don't know. We have traveled all over Europe, but I've not rode my thumb since back then.

I think most people are still filled with love.

Doug


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 1:06 am
  

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Welcome to the site. That grounding sounds like your folks were too tough on you. I couldn't have lived without my radio or tv. I was too young back then to have gone. So being a little kid. I found one of the local rock stations broadcasting it over the radio & played it all weekend on a transistor radio. Drove my folks nuts. My mom was not amused when I Country Joe came on there singing "1, 2, 3 What Are We Fighting For" and I said Hey I like that music....


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 5:11 pm
  

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Looks like a nice trip you made Doug . That must be a wonderfull feeling of freedom you had in those days. Traveling and learn to know other people gives me a nice feeling also. :)


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 10:08 pm
  

BlunderVirgin

Joined: Jul 13, 2009
Posts: 16
What a grounding you say, Doug - so wrong - if I had made it to the festival I would be "Sister Margaret Mae" now - it would have been convent boarding school for me!! It's the only threat that kept me from trying anything that extreme again - at least until I was 15 and thumbed to Toronto to see my first concert - Grand Funk Railroad - with my girlfriend. We didn't know how we were getting home - too late for trains and too scared to hitch late at night - until my girlfriend spotted a friend from school and we ended up spending 3 hours in a hearse with a bunch a freaks in a band. Come to think of it, I came closer to being Sister Margaret more times than enough : ) You are right about '75 being an excellent time to be on the road and the people taking you in. Drove with a friend in an old black pontiac across Canada to Van. Is. along the Pacific Coast through the States, down as far as New Mexico and up through Tennessee to see some friends before hitting the border. We hit all the KOAs and all the older couples thought we were 'so brave' and would bring us hamburgers and treats. It was great. One grampa kind of guy asked us if he could buy us breakfast in exchange for tales of our travels. Six weeks and 6,200 miles later we knew we would never be the same. Favorite memory - getting up before dawn, climbing a security fence, sliding down a rock wall onto a rock table and watching the sun rise in your undescribeably beautiful Grand Canyon, with tears of sheer overwhelming joy running down our cheeks. She's a beauty, your USA and when you know where to look. you are right about the people too ~ Peace


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 5:15 am
  

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Wow, it sounds like you had some interesting stories. Would love to read mroe. My folks would've never never put me in a convent school cuz my mom wasn't Catholic and my dad was an ex-Catholic. My folks never grounded me cuz I never really hung out with a wild crowd & they knew I wouldn't try anything too bad.
I do have a cooupla old funny stories.

Once about the time I went out with my friend Debbie to eat pizza in town & she invited acoupla long haired dudes she knew to come hang out with us. I think she met em on the cb radio as that's where she was always meeting guys. It was when the Dukes of Hazzard came on tv in the late 70's. The one guy looked like Bo Duke from Dukes of Hazzard and was the cute one. We couldn't ever remember his name so we both called him Bo Duke. My friend fell thru the chair she was sitting in in the pizza joint & we all had to help her outta it which was embarrassing for her. Later we are hanging out at his car sitting on it. Was an old 60's GTO. I was laying stretched across the hood of his car model style & we're all talking etc. I remember that song Ring My Bell was playing on the radio alot for some reason. A car pulls up next to us and Bo Duke & his friend says look there some old lady pulled up in a car & she's looking at us funny. I was like Oh my God it's my mom she's found us. We gotta run. She was gonna pick us up since neither of us had cars yet & I was supposed to call her to pick us up when we were ready. I'd forgot to call her. She thought we'd been picked up by strange guys and asked why we were letting strange guys pick us up. We had to explain they were Debbie's friends. Once my mom knew she knew them all was cool.

Then there was the time back in the early 80's. My late Aunt & Uncle knew Jim Bakker the tv preacher & liked him. They & my folks had bought into his resort thing he had. Well my folks went with them down to it in SC to spend the weekend. I stayed home to go with Mike. I was dating him at the time. That weekend they were having a church valentines dinner at the church & Mike & I went. He was in a funny skit in it where he played a preacher who was a cross between Jerry Falwell & Jimmy Swaggart the tv preachers and had on angel wings and was marrying a couple. The bride was a dude dressed like a lady lol. Well it snowed. Mikes late sister was down visiting from Ohio. She & Mike were concerned about me being in the snow alone so they suggested I spend the nite with Mike. So they took me home to get a few things & I went with Mike & his sister to stay with them. Well I ended up sleeping with both of them in the big king sized bed. Nothing dirty about it at all. We talked for hrs untill we fell asleep. Mikes brother found out about it & thought it was just terrible & dirty that I had "slept" with his brother & sister. Explaining it was all innocent & that I wore a sweat suit didn't help either. He said he was gonna go immediately and tell my folks when they got home. Mike told him well he had a dirty mind to think we were up to something that we weren't. I, Mike & his sister & I all ended up riding with his brother so I could explain to my folks & defend myself. We rode in an old blue 70's Ford he had. Fortunately my folks understood and weren't upset other than they wished I had told them I was staying with them. My mom said she knew I hadn't been staying at home cuz my bed looked unslept in lol. I remember my mom had bought from Jim Bakkers place a last supper of Christ picture that she put in her dining room. She still has it.


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 10:19 pm
  

BlunderVirgin

Joined: Jul 13, 2009
Posts: 16
Hey All ~ Thanks for the welcome aboard and Cheryl and Doug, thanks for your stories in exchange. Everyone has 'em - great life stories - and when you tell them, you share a private little piece of yourself and usually discover so many common threads running through us all. In adulthood I had read about "the inner child" and I was delighted to find mine alive and well after I turned 50 and my children were safely raised and successfully independant. I had been through all the changes and stages that Life brings, bride, wife, mother, working mom, single mom, business woman, soccer mom (actually baseball coach for my son's league for 8 years), the whole gauntlet right up to empty nest mom : ( which was my very least favorite...So I went sky-diving and it's been all uphill from there. If we stop moving forward I guess we get stuck in the mud, so I plan to keep on rolling. I've been to more concerts in the last four years than I managed to squeak in the whole time single mom was raising her brood - had other priorities. Single mom was more like a she grizzly with cubs, fiercely protective and guardian of the den. When the time came that I could relax my guard, the pursuit of musical passions took me to see Arlo in May of this year which in turn led me here to Arlo.net. Have tix to see him in Ottawa this October when he comes back to Canada. I will definitely report back. Nice to 'meet' you all and hear about another MaggieMae : )


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 11:29 pm
  

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MM, Likewise, welcome.


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