Bethel
New York
August 1969
Years ago, after reading my account of my Woodstock experience, (check out my column entitled The Ballad Of Sophie Labowitz published last week,) my friend and columnist Diana passed my name on to a reporter at the local newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who was doing a feature on attendees of The Woodstock Music and Art Fair. He interviewed me and a photographer came by. A week later, my photograph turned up on the front page of the Arts & Entertainment section of the Sunday paper, along with the article about me and a couple others who had been to the festival. Later that day, KDKA radio began to call me. I was invited on to a talk show later that week.
How about all this hoopla! How about my new born celebrity! How about the hippies! Well, I’ll tell ya, I found and attended Woodstock by dumb luck, as I’ve reported, and pretty much through no effort of my own, I was portrayed in a 6 x 9 photograph in the newspaper and I was put on a radio broadcast. It was fun. All week people had been telling me about seeing the article or hearing me on the air. Yeah, I’m pretty cool, I was at Woodstock.
Fun and goofy. I got a kick out of the radio show too. Another local character was invited on. Here you have a couple of guys who, by virtue of being in the right place at the right time were invited on the show. One guy was so enthralled by the music at Woodstock that he barely noticed anything else, the other guy was there for a total of about six hours and split a can of tuna fish. Neither one got laid, neither did any drugs of consequence, neither saw anyone get laid or anyone do drugs of consequence.
Just one more thing. My friend Ron (aka “Ronnie Wasp”) bought tickets to Woodstock, but when he attempted the journey, the New York Thruway had already closed and he couldn’t even get close to the grounds. I had no tickets and easily got in, Ron had tickets and couldn’t.
Woodstock.