Mr. Robert Lynch
My Woodstock
Posted by Aug 14, 2019 0 comments
Mr. Robert Lynch
Fifty years ago this week I was at Woodstock, among the “half a million strong” that Joni Mitchell sang about. I arrived in a much-mended 1963 Rambler with my girlfriend Karyl. I was 19 and it was the summer of my sophomore year in college. My brother Roger arrived separately with a bunch of his high school friends on the back of a pick-up truck held together with duct tape and band-aids. Neither of us knew the other was there. Our parents, like many other parents, didn’t learn about our trip until later, and they weren’t all that happy about it. The first news reports portrayed a chaotic, dangerous, and lawless image of the three days. The county had declared a state of emergency and reports were that the National Guard was about to be called in at any moment. Eventually, each of us would take life-changing, year-long adventures on the road—my brother on a motorcycle, me and Karyl in a VW bus. We all were English majors and were, of course, inspired by Jack Kerouac’s On the Road; but for now we had arrived at Woodstock. Even after all these many years, being at Woodstock was inspirational and significant.
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