Taking Paths Less Traveled: One Lawyer’s Woodstock Journey

By Herb Karasin, Esquire

In August of 1969, I was living in Center City Philadelphia. I graduated from law school in 1967 and had spent a year clerking for a Common Pleas judge. I was preparing to begin a new job at Community Legal Services, which represented indigent clients in Philadelphia. A few friends had heard about an upcoming music festival scheduled to be held at Woodstock, N.Y. The exact location was actually Bethel, N.Y. We decided to go. It was scheduled to kick off on Friday, August 15. Although I don’t remember the reason, I was not scheduled to work that day. I decided to drive to upstate New York with two friends Thursday night to make sure we were there for the start of the festival. The remainder of my friends, who were working that week, planned to join us on Saturday. However, none of those friends reached Woodstock. The massive number of people trying to get to the festival clogged the roads, effectively shutting them down.

Festival promoters recommended that anyone from the Philadelphia area making the trek cross the Delaware River into New Jersey and then head north on the New Jersey Turnpike. From there, travelers were directed to take the New York Thruway. I decided to chart my own course using driving maps. For those who have never navigated using paper maps, I’d be happy to provide a history lesson any time. My disregard for the directions publicized by the festival’s organizers and my unconventional path had very little traffic and no impediments to reaching my destination. This was pure luck. And avoiding traffic wasn’t the reason I chose my route. I just like to plot my own course. But at around 2:00 AM on Friday morning, after a long stretch of road with few vehicles, we turned onto another road with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Fortunately, we had arrived! The cluster of cars were directed onto a farm field where we camped for the night. This was about a mile from the actual festival site. Back then, easy walking distance. It seemed thousands of cars were directed to that and other surrounding farm fields.

The following morning, we saw the amazing numbers of relatively freaky music fans. The feeling was one of total comfort, freedom, togetherness, and acceptance. As a lawyer and a few years older than most of those flocking to the festival, I felt I was one of the straightest people in the sea of humanity. But everyone felt both free and in a world different from anything we had previously experienced. The feeling was exhilarating!

Everyone who had camped in the field walked together to the festival grounds. People were in various stages of dress, including weird and wonderfully colored and designed outfits. Many wore bright and varied colors, bell bottom pants, and tie-dyed shirts. A substantial number wore see-through clothing. No suits and ties or “straight” outfits.

We encountered growing numbers of increasingly freaky people. And the sense of euphoria grew as the crowd swelled. Somehow there was a feeling of communal togetherness. As we came closer and within site of the festival grounds, I saw something. At first unrecognizable, a huge moving mass. Then I realized I was looking at literally hundreds of thousands of people jammed on a farm hillside facing the large performance platform and sound system equipment. At some point the surrounding cyclone fence was smashed down by the hoards of the people trying to enter and tickets for admission became unnecessary. We joined the growing mass.

The first performer, Richie Havens, was on stage, and the crowd was responding to him. Throughout the day and into the evening, successive acts played, and the crowd became more excited and reacted. I cannot remember all of the acts individually, but the overall memory was wonderful. Janis Joplin was electric. Joan Baez performed after sunset. She asked everyone to light a match, lighter, candle or other flame, and the massive hillside was illuminated in firelight.

Over the weekend, announcements explained the details and magnitude of the event. For example, because of the crowd size, the fact that the small town we were in, Bethel, had become one of the most populated cities in the state of New York; marriage proposals were being made and announced from the stage; the fact of births of children had occurred, I believe; announcements warning of some bad drugs of a certain color being sold; and, unlikely, an announcement to thank the New York State Police for its accommodating and non-threatening actions. The police were concerned that any slight perception of hostility in the immense crowd could set off an unstoppable reaction. Therefore, no arrests were made for such minor issues as drug use. Keep in mind that this leniency was unheard of at the time. Somone yelled out, “Let’s hear it for the pigs.”

Each night we walked back to the camp site in the field and our car then walked back to the festival grounds in the morning. Food, water, and portable potties for the unexpectedly large crowd were limited. We weren’t starving, but we became hungrier as the weekend passed. I decided to drive somewhere to try to find another source of food. It was pointed out that all roads were closed. Being an optimist, I expressed confidence that we could succeed, and we set off in search of sustenance. As we drove, we came across a hiking trail. The trail led into some woods. I proposed driving on the trail, assuming that it would connect with yet another road at the other end. If we reached an impassable section, I figured it would be no problem turning around and driving back. There was no fear about getting stuck and then having no chance of convincing a tow truck operator to drive down a hiking trail to retrieve my car. This was the level of rational thinking I began exhibiting in that less than rational weekend. As I reflect as a rational person, I realize I was putting my 7-year-old Oldsmobile with automatic transmission at risk. It was not built for off-road excursions.

Surprisingly, taking the hiking trail worked. We found another road in a different valley and drove to a store, bought food, and returned using the same route. We may have been the only people to leave the festival and then return.

The world changed over that weekend. One small indication of this was a comment I overheard from two young men on Sunday. One of them said, ‘Do you remember Friday when we waited until it got dark before we lit up?’ As the days passed, people were no longer waiting until dark to enjoy themselves in any way. Drugs were used and distributed openly. People walked through the crowds hawking all kinds of pills, weed, and every variety of drug.

I did not see or hear about anything about any injection of drugs, but there may have been some of that going on.

The big rain and thunderstorm which has been widely publicized happened on Sunday afternoon. It was wild and crazy. Dark clouds appeared and approached. The air temperature dropped. I remember warnings from the stage to get people down from the tall towers, which had been built to hold the vast sound system; people had climbed up to get a better view of the performers. But, thunder and lightning were coming with the storm. The grounds were already wet and muddy, but the storm, which passed through fairly quickly, left a tremendous muddy mess. As the various movies of the event have shown, many people began to run and slide downhill in the mud and otherwise play in it. Joe Cocker was performing before the storm. I decided to leave after the storm to get away from the mud, mess, and water. So we missed Jimmie Hendrix, who performed the closing act on Monday morning.

After 54 years, I can’t recall all of the musical acts. Even at the time I probably could not have listed the huge number and names of the performers. One sad thing is that I do not specifically recall seeing and hearing the Grateful Dead. The group may have performed late one night after we had left for the walk back to the camp site. At the time, I was not particularly a fan of the iconic group. That changed several years after Woodstock. I finally caught on to them. Looking back, we should have stayed to watch “The Dead” perform.

But we were “Grateful” we had experienced that historic weekend.

Mr. Karasin devoted much of his 55-year career as an attorney advocating for the underserved members of our community and was a solo practitioner in downtown Reading. He is now retired.