It's all in bits and pieces, no flow or ebb to my memories, or lack of, just the distant feeling of pure amazement, fun, and wonder, too young to be affected by nature's conditions, consumed by the pure awe of it all. recreating my account follows..... i'm a 15 year old rebellious tomboy, a young hippie girl hanging with my hippie friends when we hear about woodstock. we HAD to go. I begged and lied to my parents, who finally caved and said yes, for my sixteenth birthday, if i got a job. I told mom that my best friend's older brother landed a job there and he backed me up and assured her i'd be in good hands. he wasn't even going. five guys and two girls in a van, the clan, the true adventure to be. a friend landed us a job painting a house in andover, mass, just north of Boston, where we lived, and to the owner's dismay, we blasted music, some got stoned (i opted for the tan), and we swirled our paint brushes yellow and played and laughed and sang on the roof and the ladders, and slowly the house was completed to their satisfaction(after threatening to fire us several times). we finally got paid. $75. in my pocket to burn at the concert.

now the fellow who owned the van was a few years older than us, we called him the general. he did all the planning for everything we did that summer and last, whether it was doing acid at hampton beach with led zeppelin playing at the casino (sold out, it only held 500 if that) the windows were all open so we sat right outside and listened to the whole show, peaking. i digress, or whether it was to go to harold parker forest to get stoned at the pond, or in the bird sanctuary at phillips academy, eddie(the general) led the way. he had just moved back home from Los Angeles where he had been working for the Doors. his older bro vince, was a sound tech genius, way ahead of his time, catching the wave of sound system layouts for bands, and they hired him to take care of theirs. their family business was the organ factory in town, where vince used to work for dad and started there and began working with speakers and sound as louder rock music progressed. another friend of ours had moved to la to work for the doors also in their office. Rick Arthur Tangway, RAT, known to us, who had the looks of keanu reeves and street smarts to boot. he grew up in lawrence. RIP, he died of a heroin overdose out there, go figure, with that crew. well, for some reason, eddie came back home, and he was legend in our minds. the general.

Thursday night, I was dropped off at my girlfriend's house, with a bikini, towel, a change of clothes, toothbrush and hairbrush, and my $75. Elation. Freedom. Adventure = Woodstock, here we come, no tickets, no GPS, just wait for the general to pick us up get on the mass pike and away we go. the energy and excitment fueled us into the night when the traffic on the pike slowed us down eventually to rushhour pace. stop and go. a seven hour drive turned into fifteen. we stayed up all night. eddie exited off the pike at one point to a relative's house, an uncle i think, and we were all invited inside for a few minutes. he owned a liquor store and eddie went down and purchased some wine and beer, nothing extravagant. the family was all very nice and wished us well on our way.

I experimented, but really didn't like drugs. pot made me paraoid, acid scary, and didn't like the taste of alcohol, but my bestfriend was on heroin. i think she and phil, who was eddie's age were both doing it in the van, but not in front of me. phil grew up down the street from me and was very protective. my friends derrick and jamie wreden, were the two i was closest to in the van. jamie, the younger bro, and i had a crush on each other and derreck was in love with my friend jill, the heroin user. another kid we went to high school with, billy cohen, was also with us. but he didn't hang with us all the time, there was a little distance, but he was a nice kid who enjoyed pot. very amicable crew. lots of conversation and laughter, same ideologies.

when we get back on the highway, it was about 3 am and bumper to bumper traffic. all the people started looking like us, which was wild, everyone started passsing joints and beers and smiles, and yeah, we're all going to woodstock. the rest areas and gas stations were all perpetual parties, with people stopping and going, but the party went on.

it's morning and we're too in awe to be tired, but we wanted to get there and evenutally we were on a county road, bumper to bumper, and you started seeing people walking down the sides of the roads, and acres upon acres of tents and parked cars on farmland. we knew we're getting close. suddenly, derrick who's sitting shotgun in the fan, spots two friends of ours as we pass, they're walking down the side of the road, we pull over and pick them up, they're soo happy to see us. it's the alternate goalie of our hockey team that derrick is also goalie for and his best friend. i see he has a can of coke in his hand and i'm parched from not having anything to drink for hours. "can I have a sip of that?" which he happily handed over, thankful to be picked up, tired from walking, and said pass it around. so i did. someone asked if they had any drugs and they slyly smiled and pulled a HUGE bag of acid, at least i don't know, 500 to a 1000 hits? and offered it around the van. i declined, but laughed because that's why they had been walking, to sell acid along the way. rollins, RIP, (he commited suicide 10 years later, educated, worked for a tv station), who's holding the bag announces," by the way, i dumped the residue of the pills in the coke can you drank, but shit, it shouldn't do anything major". i breifly panicked, but believed him. we took a corner down the road and dropped them off saying good bye, to look for a campsite, it was around noon, i think. the acid was just setting in as i was standing on the back of the van with the doors open, when we go over a huge bump on the farmland we were on, and i suddenly went flying about 15 feet into the air and land in the wet grass. they stopped and came back and asked if i was okay, which thankfully i was, one of the doors was slamming shut on me as a started my ascent, but oddly, i felt no pain. about five minutes later we decide on a spot and park, and i'm sitting on top of the van, taking in the sites, when derreck comes over and says why don't you get down? he looked like he was 20 feet below me, and i was scared and laughing at the same time, telling him i couldn't , i was up too high and he was too far away from me and i couldn't. he started laughing because he knew and i knew at the same time what was going on, the acid from the coke was kicking in, and i'm starting to hallucinate, my depth perception was shot. after laughing for about fifteen minutes he and his brother finally coaxed me down. jill and i decide to go find the stage is, already hearing that the fences had been torn down and it was now a free concert. the guys were too tired and too high, so off we went, we get out to the main street and jill says come on, let's cop a ride on this truck. well, this truck turned out to be Mountain's equipment truck and the roadies were all very nice. we thanked them for the ride, we were right at the stage. so then, we decide to go back and find the campsite, which was really challenging, because there were miles of the same vans, cars, tents, people, roads, but somehow jill managed to get us back there. we ate and rested awhile, yeah, right, high as kites, there was a faucet farmers used down the road where people were cleaning up, so i decide to go wash my hair. that water was freezing cold and i was peaking, that's the rush i remember about that. the water being ice cold.

it's getting later into the day and derrick and i decide to go down to the concert because it had to be starting. again, everyone's too tired and stoned to attempt it, so off we go, still tripping our brains out we get out to the road and tell derrick we have to cop a ride. everyone was riding on the hoods and trunks of cars, trucks etc. derrick claimed to be too high to even attempt jumping on a moving car, and i was too tired from walking not to, so i decided to jump on and said i'd meet him at the concert. brilliant. down the road i run into another close friend of mine, bert kates, a huge pot dealer who was from north andover, RIP, bert went missing 20 years later from a small plane crash, never found the body, only of a dead DEA agent, rumor has it he's been living in Antigua ever since. i jump off the car, meet the people he's with see his tent, ask him if he wants to come down to the concert and he passes, he's too high, and we say our good bye's and i hop on another car. in the back of mind mind i'm trying not to think about how i'm never going to find my way back to the campsite and may never see derreck, as i reach the site and the place is packed with people. ravi shankar is playing and bouncing off the hills; the energy surging is just incredible as i walk past the top of the hill and down into the hill where there's a sea of people and tripping, it was like waves and people i was walking on and over and thru, everyone was sitting down, so i was, and i'm looking for derreck, all over for derreck, a hundred thousand people and i'm going to find derreck? i walk all the way down to the middle of the front and around eyeing other people who are walking, no derreck. doom is slowly taking me over at the prospects of what am i going to do without my friends? when suddenly, out of the blue, i look to my right about twenty yards up in the crowd, our eyes meet. we were both elated and agreed to go back home to our camp site, if we could find it. at this point he was tired and we jumped on a car, and he miraculously found our road. my woodsto