We received a flood of responses to our Woodstock essay contest. Our thanks go to all of our members who took the time to send us their thoughtful and entertaining stories. Below are the top four winners, along with a few other strong contenders.
 

Grand Prize Winner: Neal Last

In the summer of 1969, not yet 17 years old, I was the drummer in The Underground Marble. We were the house rock band at the Gibber Hotel in Kiamesha Lake, New York.  After our Sunday afternoon set, we piled into a humongous 1962 Chrysler Newport that we had borrowed. One other hotel employee joined us - a busboy from the kitchen. Since his duties in the dining room had ended a short time before, he was still wearing his obligatory dining room attire: a white shirt and black pants, vest, and bowtie. 
    
White Lake was only a dozen or so miles away. We took Route 42 to the Quickway, for one traffic packed exit, to Route 17B, the road to the festival. There were hitchhikers everywhere. 

We filled the car up, put a couple on the roof, and one guy even sat on the hood. As we approached the main crossing in Bethel, we saw a New York State Trooper not allowing any more cars down the road leading to the festival at Yasgur’s Farm. Upon reaching the intersection, the busboy leaned out of the window of the car, tugged on his white shirt, held out his bowtie, and shouted to the trooper, “I have to get to work. I work in the bungalow colony down the road.” 
    
He let us through. We were ecstatic.
    
After parking the car on the side of the road, we made our way almost up to the stage and planted ourselves in the mud along with everyone else. In between group performances, I have this distinct memory of loaves of white bread being tossed out to the audience – from where I’m not sure. 
    
When Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young finished their set, it was five in the morning. We heard the talk of Jimi Hendrix coming on soon, but truthfully, we were tired and muddy.  We had one consolation; we had seen Hendrix in May of 1968 at the Fillmore East. So, leaving and not waiting to see him was not so consequential for us. It still stuns people when I tell them that I left Woodstock without waiting to see Jimi Hendrix.
   
We met some people who offered us a place to sleep at their bungalow colony nearby.  Maybe it was the same one that the trooper thought our busboy worked at. Without him, we never would have made it to Woodstock.

First Place Winner: Audrey Silverman 
 
The summer of 1969 had me turning 17. Having been in a bad car accident the previous summer, my parents forbade me to travel to Woodstock by van with my friend, Dotti, her boyfriend, Joe, and his friends. So, my friend, Donna, was kind enough to go with me by bus. We made arrangements with Dotti to meet Thursday, August 14, at the clock in town. The plan was to sleep each evening at my aunt and uncle - they had a bungalow outside Monticello. Needless to say Donna and I arrived in town and faced a sea of people, cars and vans. We knew right then that the sleeping plans were out the window. No cell phones so the plan to meet Dotti was out the window, as well. We began walking and spent that first night on the side of the road in someone's car.

The next morning Donna and I began walking with thousands of others along the road that was now basically a parking lot. All of a sudden we heard someone calling, "Donna", "Audrey". We turned towards the voice and there was Dotti's head poking out the window. Unbelievable! What were the odds? She thought she was dreaming. We jumped into the van and inched our way closer only to, very quickly, desert the van and follow the masses to Yasgur's farm. Tickets were not collected, seating was found and music was playing. We were blessed with another coincidence when we later bumped into George and "Blue," two guys we hung out with at home. They had a tent set up and let us use it for the remainder of the weekend. The downside was that the tent was next to the overflowing, stuffed up port-a-sans. Not willing to just go in the mud, someone nearby used a cereal box - that inner plastic wrap did the job but oh, the disappointment when the owner came looking for breakfast. The next to last page in the special edition of Life magazine has a picture of Joe (the back of him) and Blue leaving the concert. Dotti, Donna and I were there, too, just to the side but the camera missed us. I guess we ran out of coincidences but the memories are great. P.S. Donna and I bummed a ride in the van to go home.

Second Place Winner: Barbara Sheehan
 
I was 17 and resigned from my summer job to go to Woodstock. When my boss heard why I was leaving he said "you can keep your job just tell me all about it when you get back." Off I went, with two friends, after telling my parents I was going upstate to a farm. They thought it was wonderful, as they had grown up in Ireland. They didn't realize it was for a concert. We took trains and hitched as far as we could then walked for miles, with masses of others, while we sang, talked, and played our flutes. We drank water from the hoses people left out on their property. It was wonderful! The music was amazing! Even the rain and mud were not a problem. When the music had to stop everyone hung out meeting new people and sharing whatever they had.

Townspeople brought sandwiches on the last day and handed them out. I did call home once and my mom was stressed out that I was in a place that was "declared a disaster area." I assured her all was great and I'd need to wait until Mon. to leave since the roads were blocked. Listening to Jimi Hendrix was like being at a private concert! You could walk right up to the stage and the sound of his guitar wailing across the hill was like nothing I had ever heard. The people, place, music and time will never be forgotten. When I arrived home, shoeless and looking like I'd been outdoors in the mud I ran into my Pop when I was walking up the street. He just looked at me, shook his head, smiled and said clean up, we'll talk later.

Third Place Winner: Ken Karp 

Me/My wife to-be (in a matter of HOURS),threw caution to the wind, and, with the standard Church and Wedding Hall Reception to follow in Brooklyn, Saturday night August 16, 1969, decided to make to the treck to White lake for the event of the decade. We headed up Friday morning and joined the masses. We had several friends with us. Like everyone else we left our car somewhere off the main highway shoulder and walked the rest of the way. While discussing the next days wedding, we were overheard by an(unknown) bare-chested, wild-eyed Manson- looking guy, who claimed to be an ordained minister, and would marry us here, now, on the spot. With no thought of credentials, license, or anything a now 60 Y.O practical person would consider, we agreed. So, with our rag-tag band of cohorts, an audience of passers-by, he "married" us. By Saturday AM we were already in panic mode to get home & cleaned up in time. Thanks to a hitch, we did. Still married and hoping to celebrate in a similar Rocking manner. The great irony, I just retired, 20-years as a State Narcotics (pharmaceutical drug crimes) Officer. 

More Essays

Randy Krengel

Growing up in the Bronx, it wasn't unusual for me to be going to the Filmore East almost every weekend to see a show for $3.50, at age 14. Now there will be one show with all of my favorite groups for $21!  But how can I convince my parents. Go with my big brother who is 7 years older.  We left on Thursday, got to Bethel without traffic, and arrived to a small crowd.  There was no one to take our tickets. We set up tent at the top of the hill.  As soon as the rain started, my brothers girlfriend decided she didn't want to stay and they left. Without telling me. No cell phones. No message. Gone! I came back from exploring to a deserted site. No food. No money!  No change of clothes! How could he do this to me! Leave his 14 yr. old sister alone! It really is amazing when I look back, but I wasn't the least bit scared or mad at my brother. I stayed through Monday, to see Hendrix, hitched a ride  to Port Authority, met my brother at my train stop, and walked in our apartment as if nothing went wrong. I did have to wait many hours to get a phone call in to my brother to work that out, and to his defense, even if he tried to come back for me he couldn't have made it through the traffic. I was invited to sleep under shelters, I didn't need money as there was nothing to buy. I had free food at the" hog farm", (a soup kitchen kind of setup), and the best music I could only have dreamed of. Being pretty innocent, I was offered everything, but was not forced into anything. I actually met people from my neighborhood who offered me a spot in their tents. I felt safe. I new I was a part of something big. I was not the only one hitching back to N.Y.  People were wonderful.  No one tried to take advantage. I remember leaning against the stage as Hendrix played the national anthem and looking around as the crowds disappeared and thought to myself that it can't get much better than this. It will always be a part of who I am. I could remember clearly riding to my train stop on the #2 train to meet my brother.  I wish I had a picture of us standing together. He was freshly showered, and I was in the same clothes in the pouring rain for 5 days! I don't know how we pulled that off or if we even did. My mother was just so relieved to see us, she never said a word about the way we looked!

Bill Norkin 

We were young and innocent in '69 when a group of us decided to go to the Woodstock Festival. We saw the ad in the NY Times and sent away for our tickets. I think we paid about $23 each and as the day approached for us to leave the excitement rose. 

This was the summer we graduated from high school and a man landed on the moon--pretty heady happenings for 17 and 18 year olds. We all arranged to take off from our jobs for the weekend, gathered our camping gear, packed our food and left Connecticut on Friday morning.

Things went well until we exited the NY State Thruway and ran headlong into the longest, most brutal traffic jam that anyone up to or since that day had ever experienced.  Three of us actually exited the car and walked along side just to pass the time as the line of cars wound its way up into the Catskills. We did not arrive at a camping spot until late in the afternoon. It had taken us a good 8 hours to make a trip that would have normally taken 2. But we set up our camp, sans tent (a fatal error) and walked the mile or so back down the road to the entrance to the festival.

It was when we arrived at the main gate that we realized that the massive traffic jam was part of something that none of us could have imagined when we sent our money in to buy those tickets. 

There on the ground in front of us lay the main gate. We looked at each other and realized that our tickets were superfluous and that obviously many others had not felt the need to spend any money at all. They just showed up. But our biggest shock was yet to come. We walked in from the gate down the old farm road that led into the festival site itself.

I recall it was a pretty long walk and the road was clogged with other festival goers and people hawking drugs, clothing and all sorts of miscellaneous items. We heard the music through the trees and eventually came to the venue itself. We walked to the top of the huge bowl shaped field and viewed a sight that none of us will ever forget for the rest of our lifes. Spread in front of us was the largest group of humans I had ever seen in one place.
 
Hundreds of thousands of people and what appeared to be a pretty small stage crammed into this otherwise bucolic setting.  Amazing.

Two days later, tired, hungry, thirsty, wet and cold, we left the festival to head home.  We knew we had been part of something very special although we didn't realize how special until some time had passed. When we finally hit the NY State thruway again on Sunday afternoon we stopped at a rest area to wash up a little, eat something and phone home. My mother had been frantic in the pre cell phone era. All she knew was that her son had disappeared into the Catskill Mountains with 500,000 other people. Well, we were back. I held onto my Woodstock ticket for many years. What became of it I can't recall. I do know that every time I took it out to show someone they would say, "You were there? You actually paid for your tickets?"

Michael Teitelbaum

My dad drove me to Woodstock.

Yes, you read that correctly. I was 16 and my dad drove four of my buddies and me to Woodstock.

My folks drove us to the site, then stayed with their friends at a nearby bungalow colony. Then they would pick us up when it was over. Or so the plan went.

My dad dropped us off on Thursday, Aug 14, the day before the music was scheduled to start, and he uttered the words that became famous in our family lore: “I’ll pick you up right here when it’s over.”

We were five kids from Brooklyn who had never camped before. We had no tents and no food. All of that, according the brochure (a copy of which you featured in your article and a framed copy of which hangs in my house) would be provided at the site.

On Thursday, the event was still divided into two areas—the camping area and the concert area. We arrived at the camping area carrying nothing more than few blankets only to discover that there was no “tent store” or food concessions. So we set up a makeshift campsite out of sticks and blankets and then proceeded to have one of the most magical nights of our lives. As darkness fell (no rain in sight at this point), campfires started blazing, and people who had come to see the big names pulled out their own guitars and began to sing and play. Those who had food invited us to eat with them. If one person had food, we all ate. We were fed and entertained and amazed at the spirit of togetherness that infused the crowd.
 
And the show hadn’t even begun!
 
The next day, Friday, we moved down to the stage area where we saw the “folk night”—Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, and on and on. It was amazing. At about 4am we stumbled back to out “campsite.”

The following morning (only a few hours later) it started pouring. We watched as our blankets, tickets (yes, we had bought tickets!) and everything else we owned washed away. That day’s music (the big name rock and roll bands) were still hours away from performing. We were cold, wet, and miserable. And so, thinking the whole thing would be a washout, I waited on line at one of the handful of pay phones (yes, pay phones) and called my dad to tell him to come pick us up. “I’ll meet you at the spot where I dropped you off,” he said again. That was out on the main road, a hike from the site. We had no idea what was happening out there.

We walked in the rain out to the road and saw the endless line of cars, all just sitting there. And so we walked the 20 miles back to Monticello where we took showers and had a warm meal.
 
Part of me has always regretted not staying for all the amazing music (that was why we were there). But the memories of that first night at the campsite have never left me.
And my dad became one of the few people of his generation to have an amazing Woodstock story to tell as well.

Michael Farrell

The funniest Woodstock story that I know is about an experience of an associate of mine.  He lived in Long Island at the time and was working as a Good Humor ice cream man. He would wear the typical white long sleeve and long pant suit and get a truckload of ice cream to sell every month. When the Woodstock concert came to Bethel he wanted to go, and asked his boss if he could go upstate.  He was promptly told no way! Ignoring that denial, he trucked on upstate into the heat of the masses. Two days after he took delivery of the month's worth of ice cream, he sold it all! He told his boss, who was too pleased to be upset, cut off his sleeves and pant legs and enjoyed the weekend with hundreds of thousands of the Woodstock nation!