When I was about 18 a friend of mine introduced me to a girl named Joyce Kelly. Joyce wasn’t a beauty, but she had something special, a whispering voice, she was kind and considerate, loved life and especially music. That was Joyce and my common interest. Joyce also had a beautiful body. She had large breasts and a lovely curve. We truly loved holding one another. She was so soft and I remember her smell today. Clean and nice. Joyce’s older sister Nancy had an apartment in Edgewood, a section of Pittsburgh which had a number of multifamily dwellings. Nancy lived on the 3rd floor of a 3 family dwelling. I was living at home at the time with my Mom and Scot, so going over to Nancy’s was a liberating experience for me. Nancy was a hippie. She had long straight hair almost to her ass. She was kind and loved Joyce very much. Nancy and Joyce had lost their parents in a car accident when Nancy and Joyce were very young. Nancy raised Joyce for most of her life. If Nancy had been a little younger when they passed away the two of them might have ended up in an Orphanage.
Nancy and Joyce were originally from a small town in Pa called Greensburg. A small town that raised small-town girls with small-town views.
Joyce was naive. It was part of what attracted me to her. She had very little knowledgeable about the world outside of Pittsburgh and Greensburg PA, but at the time neither was I. I fell deeply in love with Joyce. And I viewed Nancy as the elder sister I’d never had. She was wise and well read. She spoke with a soft reassuring voice. The three of us would stay up late while Nancy would tell us about the politics of the world. Why we shouldn’t be in Viet Nam. Why I should make sure I stayed out of going to Viet Nam.
Nancy also had a great record collection. Paul Butterfield, Sony Terry and Brownie Magee, Jefferson Airplane, Phil Oaks, and Joyce and I would stay up late listening to the sounds of the sixties. A new group was emerging out of one of my favorites Buffalo Springfield. They called themselves Corby Stills and Nash. Their music was harmonic. Beautiful beyond belief. I still feel that way today. Their lyrics were of the times. Kent State –Ohio, Carry on, and others.

A dude with a scraggily looking beard…passing out flyers said “Here ya go guys”. We are walking down Walnut Street. A very hip area with girls in bell bottoms –Asmile jeans, shorts, long hair, and beads,
Peter Max style art rose above the shop fronts as Gary and I walk down the crowed sidewalks of the hip Shadyside area. “Wow! Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby Stills and Nash”, the list went on and on with our favorite bands of the time. “Let’s go I said!” Gary agreed and we headed back to my Mom’ car that she let us borrow for the afternoon to go back home to pack. When we got home we told Mom that we were of to a concert in a place called White Lake. Here’s $10 for each of you. Be careful and be sure you call me on your way when you can get to a phone. I decided to make a sign, so I got some magic marker and put PA Turnpike on one side and New York on the other. I didn’t know where we were going in NY. Gary and I put a few things in our knapsacks and Mom drove us down the nearest intersection to start on our trip. We kissed Mom goodbye and unloaded our sacks and while Gary went and sat on the grass, I put out our sign along with my thumb. After a minute or so a young guy alone in the car stopped and asked, “Where you guys headed?” to a concert at White Lake I answered enthusiastically “I’m going to the next intersection if you want a lift.” Before we could put our knapsacks in the car, we were taking them back out. Thanks Man!
I put my sign back out and the next ride took us to the PA Turnpike. From there we turned over our sign to show the NY side and we were off. I don’t remember how many rides it took to get us close by, but I do remember one older gentleman dressed in a nice suit. As the radio station talked about the NY state freeway crawling to a stop, I remembered staring at his shoes shined to a reflective mirror finish. Who is this guy I thought and will I ever see him again. The thought was over and so was the ride. After 4 or 5 more rides, we started getting close because the people walking beside the cars were moving as fast as the cars were. Up and down hill after hill we walked. One VW microbus full of hippies and a black guy driving it with an afro to beat all afros, he reminded me of Luke from the Mod squad. In back of the van Gary and I toked on joint after joint. The dude in the front passed out a bottle of wine to one of the walkers beside us and what seemed like an hour later, that same guy handed me the wine bottle back! Time was going in slow motion and it seemed like we’d never get there. Somehow we got out of the van and started walking again. “The concert is over, they canceled it.” One girl said. We decided to keep walking. We’d come far enough already. It was dark and the only lights were from showing from the line of cars lined up behind us as far as we could see. There was no traffic coming toward us so we figured we’d just keep going. “You can’t get in without a ticket” another guy blurted out. He was stoned and one guy behind me said “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he can hardly stand up.” Gary and I didn’t have tickets, they were $50 from the guy in Shadyside and we didn’t have $50 between us. We hoped that when and if we ever got to the concert that we could finagle a way in.

After hours and hours of rides in cars, and what seemed like days of walking in the dark, I heard a faint singing. As we got closer we could make out the words, “Coming in from London from over the pole, Flying in a big airliner, Chickens flying everywhere around the plane could we ever feel much finer?” ….Hey it’s Arlo Guthrie I screamed!
I knew we were there! Or at least we close. I couldn’t believe it! Compared to how far we had come already it didn’t seem like much time had passed until we got to the amazing hill of wall to wall people. But looking back on it must have been an hour or so. Arlo’s voice carried over the hill!

We’re here Gary. We were exhausted, tired and dirty. It seemed like a week ago that we gotten our first ride from the guy alone in the car. Our PA/NY sign was now a ripped piece of cardboard with faded magic marker, dirty and tired from the many car floors it had sat on. I threw it into a dumpster and as we stood at the top of the hill and looked down into the dark, over the wall of people and pot smoke, all that was visible was a very distant light far into the distance. The smoke and fog danced in the huge spotlight pointing to the stage.
“How do we get down there” Gary asked. Gary and I were known for our aggressive natures when we were younger-or so we thought. We were both off-street motorcyclists in our teens. We would down a few Percodans and ride our motocross bikes into the woods below our home, un-frightened by what might lay ahead of us in the wooded area! If we did get hurt at least we had our pain medicine in us already.
I looked down the far edges of the crowd and noticed that to the right and left there was a wood fence with about a 5 foot margin between the fence and the crowd. “Follow me”. I headed down the side and we found that we had an open path that led us down to the front of the stage. But once we got to the front we found ourselves pushed right up to the wood fence barrier that stood between the crowd and the stage. The fence was about 10 feet tall so that you couldn’t see anything if you were right up against the fence. The crowd was packed 3 feet back from the fence because that was right where you could see the stage. Gary and I faced the wood fence and slowly pushed our way backward until we could see the stage. Joan Biaz was performing when we finally were fixed in our spot. I looked over at Gary and took it all in. He was just exhaling from a big toke that he took from a joint that a cute chick beside him handed off. “W----O-------W” he said in a slow-motion exhale! We were mesmerized by the grass, the music, the crowd, and the Moment. After a few hours of listening to.

That night we made our way back to the top of the hill. We made a U shape out of the fence that had been cut and placed some corn husks over it in case it rained during the night. We placed our sleeping bags on the floor and fell into a catatonic serenity.
During the night I had awaken many times to the far away sounds of The Who and later or should I say early the next light, Jefferson Airplane. I finally was forced out of my sleeping bag to the soaked feeling of waterlogged pants, shirt, shoes and sleeping bag. It had poured all night long and our sleeping bags didn’t deter a drop of it.

After tossing and turning for what seemed to be hours I peeled away my saturated sleeping bag. Gary and I found our way under a large maple tree with a handful of other people. “What a night”, I said to one of them. “Who is going to be on today I asked?”
He muttered an answer, but when it made it to my clogged ears it sounded like a slow-motion slur.
The sun shown through the clouds, and the music began. Joe Cocker vibrated onstage in his tie-died shirt to a chorus of Through the Bathroom Window... Hours passed as we stand listening to the music in our drenched clothes.

Little did I know that the drumstick I was catching would be well-appreciated someday...It was the drumstick of the drummer from Santana! He was young and his beat was right on! The sun was hot and the mud from the rain was all around us. The smell of Grass was heavy in the air. I felt a poke on my shoulder, it was a girl handing me another joint. I took a hit and inhaled till I couldn’t hold it anymore. The sound of the music, and my feelings were soaring. A peacefulness came over me. O’ le co mo va…I sang along. Ladies and Gentlemen ….Sha Na Na…I’d never heard of them before. 5 or 6 men, at least to me they looked like men-older, in 50’s style clothes, Gauchos, satin pants and black pointed shoes came across the stage dancing and singing. One o’clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock 4 …Hmmm this is different I thought. Who the hell are they and what are they doing here. The crowd roared and started to sing along. It was an old fashion 50’s sing along with a group of guy’s style’n, hair that met in the back and was slicked down with 10w 30. Bozzer, the lead singer was a tall, really crazy energetic dude with a great bass voice. By the time they left the stage they had a few hundred thousand fans on their feet screaming for more! It was humid and the air was thick with moisture and the smell from Grass and the unbathed bodies surrounding me. That day I sat in the hot sun and mud and continued to be serenaded by the likes of Credence Clearwater Revival, Canned Heat, Mountain, Quill Joe Cocker, and others that I can’t remember because I was either to stoned or to tired, or possibly and probably both. I hadn’t seen Gary for a while and it was dusk and decided to go looking for him. I squeezed my way to the front of the stage. I ran into Gary on the way back and said, “I bet Mom is worried sick about us. We should call her now.” We sloshed our way through the thick mud and finally came to what was a quarter mile of pay phones all standing in a row. There must have been two hundred of them, and each and every one had a line of people waiting. I mean a long line, possibly 20 to 50 people in each line. I remembered that they were announcing on the stage every hour or so something like “ Bill, call home", your brother needs to get your diabetic medicine to you”. So….I walked up to one of the lines and scoped out a kind face. I got to the second person in that line and said, “Excuse me; they just made an announcement on stage that I needed to call my Grandfather at the hospital in Pittsburgh right away. The kind faces said oh sure go right ahead. I got a quarter from Gary and called my Mom and told her that we were alright. She said that she had been hearing on the news what chaos it was on the way to the concert and was thrilled that we called. I thanked the kind face and Gary and I worked my way back to our makeshift corn hut.

Gary and I didn’t have much money on us. We went looking for food and came upon a makeshift wood hut with handwritten signs. Peanut and butter $2.00. What? Can you believe it, two bucks for Peanut and Jelly? I only had a few dollars left from the $10 my Mother had given me but I was starving, and there wasn’t much else to choose from. The peanut butter and jelly tasted more like steak and potatoes to me! My most vivid and exhilarating memory of Woodstock was during a break in the concert I was sitting eating the peanut butter and jelly sandwich while listening to Crosby Stills and Nash singing….”It’s getting to the point….