I spent Woodstock in the Maidstone caddy shack

Iwas 16 in the summer of 1969. It was the first summer that my family spent in our new summer home in Barnes Landing. In those days it was considered normal for a teenager to have a summer job, and this summer would be my first. I was excited.

My initial thought was to go to the East Hampton House and see if I could become a bellhop. The idea of earning money through tips was intriguing. However, despite being on the tall side, they weren't interested.

I had started playing golf a little seriously the previous fall when NYC had a school strike and summer vacation was extended through October. A bunch of us decided to spend two or three days a week at the Kissena Golf Course in Queens, a short par 64 public course. Possibly that's what gave me the idea to go to the Maidstone Club to see if I could caddy, something at which I had absolutely no experience except for carrying my own skinny golf bag.

They took me right away. I did feel a little bit an outsider since most of the caddies were local, and I was a summer resident from Queens, and I actually can't remember making any friends. I kind of felt out of place about by being Jewish, so I kept that quiet. I do remember a guy who we called Bridgehampton, you could guess why. I think he went to high school

by George Fiala

with Carl Yastrzemski, the great Boston Red Sox outfielder whose parents were potato farmers in Southampton. Yaz never showed up at the shack that summer—he was busy hitting 40 home runs and playing 162 games.

A round of golf was called a loop, and my first loops were carrying clubs for women club members on the short, nine hole course. That was to the right of the main course, which I think only men played in those days. I don't know how they run it today, maybe it's now called the senior, or just the short course. There were two famous women that I remember caddying for.

One was the writer Helen MacInnes. Well known for writing realistic novels about the Cold War, I still haven't ready any. All I remember is that she had some kind of a British accent. My main task was to make sure she (and all the golfers I caddied for) didn't lose too many golf balls. Her husband, Gilbert Highet, a scholar, was also a member.

The other was the actress Dina Merrill, whose famous husband Cliff Robertson was also a member. I remember her as being tall and skinny. And a good golfer.

A caddy got $4 for carrying a set of clubs on the short course. That includes a dollar tip, which you almost always got. After a while I graduated to the grander 18 hole course, where you could do two loops a day, each time a double, meaning you carry two bags and run from one golfer to the other as they shot their way through the 6,000 or-so-yard course that included holes with water and swampy areas, where you were expected to find and retrieve badly shot golf balls. That's where I made real money. The caddy fee was $6, plus the dollar tip. It was pretty busy in 1969, although I was told that it was busier the year before when the stock market was doing better. Most weekends I did three doubles—Friday, Saturday and Sunday. That meant that I could put away $84 in cash by Sunday night. I kept it all in an envelope on my closet shelf.

I don't remember too much about the members, much more about the bags. There was one named Ollie. And some Vanderbilts, which even then I knew was a famous family. They were all serious golfers. Part of the job was to track the drives so you could guide them to the second shot. Most hit pretty far. You had to wear a baseball hat so you wouldn't lose the ball in the sky. Some members would break out a flask in the middle of the round.

It was easier to do doubles as the heavy bags balanced out on your shoulders. You would drape your arms over the tops of the bags and it kind of felt like you were wearing armor, or giant epaulets. The bags were well stocked with clubs and balls, and possibly liquid refreshments, umbrellas and extra golf shoes.

I was often asked to estimate the distance of the shot to the green, so I had to learn where all the yard markers were. Even though global warming was yet a thing, it would got pretty hot on the course, and I looked forward to the halfway house, which was a small cabin stocked with drinks and candy bars and snacks. Those were the days of the 6 1/2 ounce cokes in the green bottles, which I loved as they were real cold.

A little ways after that was a hole that overlooked the ocean. Without that hole, you could have no idea that the Club was on the beach. The huge clubhouse and cabins and hedges hid the beach when you drove up the road. That road, which the map tells me is called Old Beach Lane, leads to the parking lot. The caddy shack is next to the lot, in front of the clubhouse, hidden from view by the shrubbery. Mostly it had a bench, which you sat on while waiting for the caddymaster to come in and pull you out for a loop.

I guess that first year my mom would drive me there. I had to be there by 6 am, or you couldn't make two loops. Thank you mom! I sometimes hitchhiked home, which is really hard to believe when you think about it. I would walk down Egypt lane to the highway and stick my thumb out right past the post office. It actually wasn't hard to get a ride in those days, and you never thought it might be dangerous. Over the years I've met people who went to Woodstock. I love to tell my Woodstock story which took place in East Hampton. There was always a Daily News to read when you got there. The front page one Saturday had a photo of this stupendous traffic jam on the NY State Thruway. Evidently there was a huge music festival happening.

I was pretty surprised, I had no idea that something like this was planned. It's not like I wasn't into music, quite the opposite. Had I spent the summer in the city I might have even thought about going, but not in the splendid isolation of Amagansett as a teenager without a cellphone.

My own Woodstock occurred just about six weeks later, when I experienced my first all nighters. That was at Shea Stadium, waiting on line with my friends for Met playoff and World Series tickets.

It was like a city beach, or festival, with plenty of blankets, and radios tuned to WNEW-FM playing the new Crosby Still and Nash album all night long, with psychedelic looking people drinking and smoking and being in a very peace, love and Mets mood.

In fact, a Daily News photographer showed up and I got on that back page under a headline "Mets Plot Playoffs."