THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 13, 1994 TAG: 9408120122
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
SOURCE: INTERVIEWS BY JIMMY GNASS
LENGTH: Long : 120 lines
ON A SATURDAY, I was working on my car. I had on overalls and a wool knit cap. Some fellas came by and asked me if I wanted to go to a concert. I said ``Sure, let me go inside and change.'' They said, ``Nope, you gotta come as you are.''
So I did. It was totally unplanned. I didn't know what I was getting into. That's why it was a big shock to me. . . .
There were a lot of drugs going on. There were boxes set up along the side of the road, like a kid's Kool-Aid stand. There were a lot of people drugged out. There were signs that said Turkish Hash, Panama Red, Mescaline, LSD - everything. It started shaking me up when I saw this, because everybody was completely wiped out. I was thinking to myself, ``Where am I going?''
All the people there - it was kind of mind boggling. It was phenomenal. There weren't many accidents. The amount of people and the limited resources of the place - it was like a million people in Pungo surviving without hardships.
Kermit Lewis, 49
Portsmouth structural engineer
IT WAS AN attitude. That kind of a feeling is not something that you can repeat. It's not something that you can update or upgrade. It was a totally different situation. I think the new one is merely a commercial ploy to exploit the Woodstock name and generation. You would think that the guy who set up the original Woodstock would have better sense. He, of all people, should know that you can't do it again. The original tickets were like $18. That's a far cry from this.
It's the difference between night and day. The music was real. You could sit and listen and relate to it. And now it's: How many records will sell?
Woodstock was unique.
It made me overall a much stronger person, a much more open-minded person.
You learned a lot about getting together with people. If you didn't look out for the guy next to you, and he wasn't looking out for you, you might have woke up in the mud somewhere. That kind of possibility existed. We were 300,000 crazy people. Everybody clung to each other. There was a lot of drugs, but so what?
Roger Faust, 44
Virginia Beach postal worker
IT WAS A HUGE, vast crowd. It was not unlike these refugee camps you see on TV these days. It was dirty, muddy, unsanitary, crowded.
What I remember most vividly was some adolescent kid going around in something of a Cheech and Chong voice asking, ``Has anybody got a match? It's for a good cause.''
So we left. You could hardly see the musicians at all, much less hear them.
When we left, the cars were moving slowly because of the traffic. In the spirit of the times, people were just getting up on the car.
I did not want these people on my car. But they wouldn't get off.
Mike Salasky, 44
Norfolk personal injury lawyer
MY MOTHER didn't even know where I was. She called the state police and filed a report. The guy said, ``Lady, you and about 50,000 other kids.''
We got there early, we were pretty close up front. Very close. When the performers finished, some of them would come down and mill around. I looked around, and there was this black guy with this humongous afro and this fringy purple jumpsuit. And I looked and then did a double take. I touched his arm and said, ``Are you Jimi Hendrix?''
He said, ``How you doing, man?'' He shook my hand and moved on through the crowd.
There was no violence. Real peace. Strangers came up to you and gave you hugs. It's not like that today.
I have no opinion of this new one. I heard there was going to be a dozen ATM machines. . . . How can you cash in on a memory?
Maggie Cash, 45
Virginia Beach college student
THERE WAS this old farmer, maybe in his mid-50s, wearing overalls. He just stood in his backyard staring over his field. Instead of crops, there were people. People all over his grounds. You could just see the lines in his face getting deeper and deeper. He let us use his phone. When we came into the house, he said almost sadly, ``We didn't mind you kids coming, but we didn't know we were going to lose everything.''
But they still helped us. And they shared all their food with us.
That's what it was all about. Woodstock was a city of love and giving. Human needs rose above monetary. I don't think that would happen today.
Wendy Jo Ikley, 46
Virginia Beach
I WAS A William and Mary biology major. We got up at 5 in the morning and stuck our thumbs out - hitchhiked all the way up there. Got a ride from Richmond all the way to Woodstock.
We stopped in this little grocery store, and there was absolutely nothing in there to eat. We started walking to the festival site and got there about 11 at night.
Walking down this strange country path, you couldn't see a thing in front of you. But there were hordes of people going in the same direction.
We came up over this hill. Ravi Shankar was playing. It was pretty overwhelming. The energy, you would not believe.
That night, we slept on the counter of a concession stand. And we were happy to get off the ground. The next morning, we woke up to this guy yelling, ``Where is that great light show in the sky!''
Reggie Lewis, 44
Virginia Beach building contractor
BASICALLY WHAT I saw were flower children, hippie-type folks. It seemed to me that they were all trying to convince themselves they were having fun while they were wallowing in the mud. We more or less came to the end of the road and there was this sea of people. The grass was trampled. It was wet, muddy. Not the kind of place I wanted to be. I wandered around for a couple of hours and looked at some of the people. A couple of hours later, I just left.
It seemed to me that between the years 1966 and 1969 the whole world went mad.
Joe Scarlott, 46
Machinist, Virginia Beach
KEYWORDS: WOODSTOCK by CNB