Woodstock Revisited by Susan Reynolds

Author:Susan Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2009-12-14T05:00:00+00:00

where to now, pilgrim?

by Robert Paul Blumenstein

The 1962 Studebaker, when it pulled into my driveway on August 13, 1969, had dings along the side panels and rust spreading across the bumper. Nevertheless, that was the car that my friend Moby swore would take us from Greenville, South Carolina, to the town of Bethel, New York, and maybe back.

I had rolled up my sleeping bag, filled my backpack with dry clothes, toiletries, and a few cans of food. We planned to stop on the road and finish gathering provisions for our pilgrimage to that sacred patch of terra firma, where the world would see that peace and love had now become a way of life. That’s how Moby and his front seat passenger Levi and I saw it.

Unfortunately, that’s not how my father saw it. For him, it was a different matter altogether. He stopped me at the door and said in a steady voice, “If you leave, don’t ever come back here again.”

Universally speaking, teenagers and conundrums are wedded partners. They’re always faced with the prospect of choosing one path or the other, no matter how sharply or subtlety they diverge: Drink that beer, or just say ‘No thank you’; have sex, or wait until marriage; smoke that weed, or don’t inhale. At that time in my life, like all teenagers, I faced the same riddle: What happens if I do, or, what will happen if I don’t?

I opposed the Vietnam War with effusive passion. Yet, it was more than the issues germane to Southeast Asia that fueled my fire against this war; my dad bought a portable television and set the thing on the end of the dining table. We sat at our table night-after-night watching soldiers and innocent victims die and babies burn. Even as a teenager, I saw nothing sensible, heroic, or justifiable in the devastation that takes place in war.

Also, the very same summer of Woodstock, the dude across the street returned home from a tour of duty in Vietnam. His parents had sewn several bed sheets together and painted on the words “Welcome home, Harvey!” (similar to the yellow ribbon thing that came later) and planted the banner in their front yard. I’ll never forget the day Harvey showed up. Within the first hour of his arrival, he marched out into the front yard and ripped the banner down.

A different set of values was on the line when my dad stepped in front of me and said, “You leave, you don’t come back.” In less than two weeks, I would start my senior year in high school—my last year before attaining commencement of adulthood— so I made what I thought was an adult decision.

Moby backed his Studebaker out of our driveway and Levi never got the chance to argue with me over who got the front seat. I found out later that Chipper, the fourth pilgrim of our sojourn, had been given the same ultimatum by his mother that my father had given me. And so it turned out that only Moby and Levi made it to Woodstock.

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