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OfflinemotamanM
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By the time they got to Woodstock
    #10844872 - 08/12/09 10:30 AM (14 years, 7 months ago)

By the time they got to Woodstock

By Eric Taylor, Leader Sports Editor
Published: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 5:15 AM CDT


In June, Alan Kreisler visited the site of the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in upstate New York, where a marker serves as a remembrance of the historic event that took place in August of 1969. Kreisler has been back to the site several times since he attended the event 40 years ago.



Well I came upon a child of God

He was walking along the road

And I asked him, tell me, where are you going?

This he told me

Said, I’m going down to Yasgur’s Farm

Gonna join in a rock and roll band

Got to get back to the land and set my soul free

— “Woodstock” by

Joni Mitchell, 1969

Three days of peace, love and music has become 40 years of memories for nearly half a million people.

It’s been four decades since that throng engulfed Max Yasgur’s farm near the small upstate New York community of Bethel for the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival.

For Alan Kreisler and Bob Hasiak, the memories are still very vivid.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s been 40 years,” Kreisler said. “It’s harder for me to believe that I’m 60 years old.”

Kreisler, resident engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Fort Crook Area Office at Offutt Air Force Base, was a 20-year-old college student when he rounded up three of his high school buddies and headed for what was supposed to be around a three-hour trip to the concert.

“It took us a lot longer than the three or three-and-a-half hours it should have taken,” Kreisler said. “That’s when we realized we were in for a long haul.”

Kreisler and his friends purchased tickets ahead of time for Saturday and Sunday’s performances. They paid $7 apiece for the tickets, but as it turned out, they didn’t even need those tickets because the mass overflow of people had forced promoters to scrap any plans of collecting tickets. Kreisler still has those tickets.

After finding a spot to camp a couple of miles from the stage Friday night, the group made their way to the concert the following morning.

“As we’re walking toward the show, we met so many people who were walking back after Friday’s show,” Kreisler said.

Hasiak was a 26-year-old graduate student at Cornell University who had narrowly missed being drafted to serve in the Vietnam War.

He and several classmates decided to head to the concert, mainly to hear the folk music scheduled for the opening day.

“I was a big fan of Joan Baez,” Hasiak recalls. “We heard there was going to be a big show and we weren’t that far away so we figured, what the hell, let’s go over there.”

So they loaded up in a friends’ Volkswagen Bus (is there any other way to go to Woodstock?) and arrived at the show on Thursday, a day before the scheduled Friday start.

Hasiak had purchased tickets along the way from a scalper. He doesn’t remember what he paid for them.

“We got there a day early and there was already a fair amount of people there,” Hasiak said. “They were coming from everywhere.”

By the time the show got started Friday, Hasiak remembers the scene being one of a “mob of people.”

“They had literally overrun the entire area,” he recalled. “There were bodies all over the place.”

Woodstock has taken on the reputation of being three days of constant drug use by those in attendance and while there was a fair share of marijuana and LSD being passed around, Kreisler says the perception that everyone in attendance was using and abusing just isn’t true.

“I was pretty naïve at the time, but I didn’t see the drug use everyone talks about,” he said. “I was about as straight as you could get back then and drug use wasn’t something I was exposed to.”

Like Kreisler, Hasiak “didn’t do drugs and never have,” but he does recall seeing those around him enjoying various supplements.

“There was marijuana and LSD going around and I remember seeing a lot of weird people,” he said. “We didn’t have long hair and we didn’t take drugs, we just wanted to enjoy the music.”

Hasiak said he and his classmates didn’t view themselves as political rebels by attending the show, just some college students enjoying a little music.

“We weren’t making any kind of statement and I don’t think the event was as political as people think,” Hasiak said.

Kreisler believes most people at the show were there for one reason – the music.

“I don’t remember anyone holding banners or protesting the war,” he said. “I think a lot of them were there because of the music.”

There was plenty of music to enjoy. The opening day’s folk music acts featured Richie Havens, Baez, Ravi Shankar and Arlo Guthrie.

Saturday brought more hard rock acts, including the likes of Credence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Santana and The Who, which didn’t take the stage until 3 a.m. Sunday morning.

What did put a damper on Saturday’s festivities was a mid-afternoon rainstorm that dumped several inches on fans and left Yasgur’s a muddy mess. It was eventually declared a disaster area.

“The rain hit and the winds picked up; then it got really hot,” Kreisler recalls. “I remember it being muddy trying to make your way up to the porta-potties.”

The rain, mud and overall mess made it a short stay for Kreisler and his buddies. Even though they had tickets for Sunday’s show, they decided to leave at about 3 a.m. Saturday, Kreisler said.

“It was just too much for us,” he said. “Everybody wanted to be back by Sunday.”

Hasiak and his crew also left after Saturday’s storm.

“It got to be a real mudhole and we were concerned it would be a week before we’d get out of there,” he said. “I was glad that I had gone, but I was also glad that I was leaving.”

Hasiak and Kreisler have differing views on how they believed the concert will be and should be remembered.

“For myself and the group that went, it was an event that happened where there were a lot of people and we got to hear a lot of the music we wanted to hear,” Hasiak said. “I really wonder if it had much of an impact to this day.

“We didn’t take it as a rebellion or anything, we just all wanted to get along and enjoy the music.”

Hasiak moved to several parts of the country as part of his job with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and found his way to Bellevue a dozen years ago. He has never made the trip back to the concert site.

“I haven’t gone back and to be honest, I haven’t thought about going back,” he said.

Kreisler has made several trips back to the area. He has attended several class reunions from college and each time he’s back for those, he’s found time to go back to the concert site. He was back this past June, where he got the chance to visit the Museum at Bethel Woods.

“The area is still untouched,” he said. “The site itself hasn’t changed one bit.

“For me, every time I go back it’s like visiting sacred ground.”

Kreisler says Woodstock has earned its place among the many landmark events that took place in the 1960s.

“I don’t think at the time, anyone thought it was that big of an event and would have this kind of effect,” he said. “It wasn’t a life-changing event for me, but it is an event I’m very proud to have been a part of.

“I don’t go around bragging to people that I was at Woodstock, but I don’t try to hide it.”

What Hasiak and Kreisler can both agree on is that they never imagined when they converged on Bethel that weekend that they would be a part of the largest outdoor concert in history.

“I had been to outdoor concerts before, but never with more than 1,000 people,” Hasiak said. “I had no idea Woodstock would turn into that. To me, it was a total shock.

“All I know is that it could have turned very ugly and it didn’t. I don’t think something like that would ever work today.”

Kreisler said they were overwhelmed by the happenings.

”I don’t think we appreciated the magnitude of it,” Kreisler said. “I remember getting back home Sunday and my mom being blown away by seeing what had taken place.

“She told that if she had known it was going to be like that, she wouldn’t have let me go. Of course, I was 20 at the time so I would have gone anyway.”


http://omahanewsstand.com/articles/2009/08/12/bellevue_leader/news//doc4a8188fa23f3e347796924.txt


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OfflineRevolutionine
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Registered: 11/16/08
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Re: By the time they got to Woodstock [Re: motaman]
    #10844925 - 08/12/09 10:42 AM (14 years, 7 months ago)

Wish i could've been there, but I was born about 40 years too late.


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All I ever wanted was to be free,

and in the end that's how it turned out to be...

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OfflinePilzeEssen


Registered: 12/24/07
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Re: By the time they got to Woodstock [Re: Revolutionine]
    #10845710 - 08/12/09 12:56 PM (14 years, 7 months ago)

that would have been an amazing concert. they probably had some KILLER acid but some shitty weed. either way, woulda been a BLAST!!!!


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"The soul has greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live."

If you want to get a hold of me, my email address is in my profile. Just click on my screen name. I got banned from using private messages cause I didn't follow the rules... :frown:

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OfflineMoronicus
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Registered: 05/13/09
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Re: By the time they got to Woodstock [Re: Revolutionine]
    #10846319 - 08/12/09 02:16 PM (14 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:

Revolutionine said:
Wish i could've been there, but I was born about 40 years too late.



:highfive:


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BACON RANCH, FUCK YEAH


A post about m00nshine

Anonymous #6 said:
Yes, it is. The shine stands for his job title, which is Shoe Shiner, the moon stands for the time he comes out to be a nigger, which is best suited for the negroid camouflage.

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OfflineShroomDoom
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Re: By the time they got to Woodstock [Re: PilzeEssen]
    #10849387 - 08/12/09 09:49 PM (14 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:

PilzeEssen said:
that would have been an amazing concert. they probably had some KILLER acid but some shitty weed. either way, woulda been a BLAST!!!!





now things are reversed. lol

killer weed is everywhere. most acid is shitty (compared to the doses they had back then)


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