Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 11, 1994 TAG: 9408110045
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WOODSTOCK LENGTH: Long
Santana, man. They were there.
This promised to be a major rush. Of course, we were early yet. The whole Janis and Jimi, flower power, peace and love, next stop is Vietnam nostalgia trip was still a week away. But we needed to be early, to preview the approaching deja vu, for posterity.
And to buy souvenirs.
Maybe an Aerosmith T-shirt.
Was Aerosmith there? I couldn't remember.
We stopped at the Valley Gift Shop, where they sold cedar salt-and-pepper shakers with pictures of cows on the front, and piano-shaped music boxes that played, "It's a Small Small World," and refrigerator magnets with the slogan: Send More Tourists. The Last Ones Were Delicious. But nothing about the cornerstone event of an entire generation.
"Are you talking about the concert?" the perplexed clerk said.
We moved on.
We found the chaw-chewing police chief, Jerry Miller, who looked like he had seen enough hippies to last a lifetime and didn't want to be bothered. He answered our questions in few words with even fewer syllables, or sometimes with just a nod, and eyed my partner's camera with suspicion.
I asked if he had taken any special precautions for the coming weekend?
"No."
And that didn't worry him?
He shook his head. No.
I asked about hippies.
Seen any? No.
Any locked up in jail? No.
Any living nearby? No.
Was he ever one? No.
"Farm boy," he explained. "I never got out of the cornfield."
We moved on.
We talked to the mayor and his wife, Tim and Cathy Dalke, owners of the town movie theater, who seemed similarly unfazed by the coming event. "The first one had no effect on us, and I don't expect what's going on now will either," the mayor said.
Something was wrong with this picture.
It turned out that in 1969, the mayor wasn't even in the country. He was in Vietnam somewhere. So, how would he know anyway? And his wife was living in Washington, D.C., letting her hair grow long and wearing bell-bottoms. "But I didn't smoke pot or anything like that, if that's what you want to know," she said.
Right. (Wink.) Who did?
At least, unlike Chief Miller, they were recognizing the event by hanging an old movie poster in the theater's lobby. Her idea. She also had attached a handwritten placard. "Do you remember?" Like someone is going to come out to the movies with everything else going on.
Then, being the mayor, Dalke started plugging his town's attributes, telling us about its history, that it was put on the map by Peter Muhlenberg, known as "the fighting parson of the American Revolution."
A minister, Muhlenberg had apparently stormed off the pulpit one Sunday morning in 1776, ripped off his robe to reveal a soldier's uniform underneath, and declared: "There is a time to pray and a time to fight," which we all know became a rallying cry for the anti-war movement of the 1960s.
Didn't it?
"We've had our share of radicals," the mayor said.
We decided to do our own research.
At the local newspaper office, we looked at back copies of the paper from August 1969. Strangely, there was no mention of Max Yasgur or his farm or anything about the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. The top story was about a referendum on better television reception.
The big farm news was: Odd Potato Looks Like "Tater Smith." It read: A free potato, grown in a compost pile, has been identified as "Tater Smith," of the comic strip, by Mr. Leo Moomaw of Orkney Springs, who brought the potato into the [newspaper] office last week.
There was only one item about music, promoting a music festival featuring Richard Waller, a visiting clarinet player from the Cincinnati Symphony. It seemed they missed the big story.
We started asking around town about music.
It seemed they were missing the big story again. They pointed us to Radio Shack. Radio Shack pointed us to Barbara Strong, assuring us that if we found her, then we would find music.
Barbara Strong, man. Wasn't she with Canned Heat?
OK, maybe that was somebody else. In 1969, Strong was a young mother living in Indiana, and on this day, we found her teaching piano to Abbey Woods, 13, who wasn't even born until 1980. Woods practiced scales up and down, over and over.
"One and two and three and four," Strong chanted along.
Was this it? Was this what people like Abbie Hoffman, Richie Havens and other parsons of the American Revolution prayed and fought for? Was it one toke over the line for nothing?
"One and two and three and four."
Somewhere, Peter Muhlenberg must have been rolling in his grave.
We pressed on, down Main Street, and then, like an acid flashback, he appeared, too good to be true, sitting in the window of Walton & Smoot Pharmacy, a beacon of musical freedom in a town otherwise blinded to its own identity.
His name was Gary Smith. In his hand, he held a microphone.
On his boom box was a bumper sticker: No Hope in Dope!
A downtown fixture, Smith, 47, and his microphone have been serenading the locals and the tourists from his window for years, usually by singing along with whatever comes on the radio.
"I just do it for the fun of it," he explained.
Or as Sly and the Family Stone said: Thank You. (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin.)
Sly, man. Sly was there.
For a souvenir, we settled on the refrigerator magnet with the slogan: Send More Tourists. The Last Ones Were Delicious. And I searched the radio dial again, looking for something to help make sense of it all. We were disappointed that we had not found more to mark the anniversary of such a cultural milestone. At the same time, we felt oddly satisfied that, in 1994, America was in good shape.
We headed home and the radio locked in on: There ain't no cure for the summertime blues.
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