In the Mud
A Woodstock Experience by Joe Andriano(Originally written in 1994 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the concert. Tweaked in 2009 to celebrate the 40th.)
--Pause it right there, quick!
Back it up! That was me!
--Where? What? That?
That blur, that blot?
That could be anybody.
--I tell you it's me
I remember where we sat,
there in the mud.
I'm in the movie!
I remember it well:
the six-mile hike
from where we parked,
in the mud,
I still see the girl in her granny-dress, her wire-rims
and her grin, sitting on the road, giving us the V, offering
us wacky weed; we--my friend Van and I--were the only
citizens of Woodstock Nation who had left our dope at home,
having obeyed the organizers' admonitions
Three Days of Peace and Music
without Dope. There was, of course, dope galore,
so we bought from the grinning granny-dress what we thought
was pot (really catnip and birdseed, with a little cowshit
added for bulk, uncut she called it) Thanks my dear, I thank
you now, I'm glad I saw it all straight
walking the six miles, overtaking Volkswagen busses steaming
and stalled, walking up to farmers gawking at the girls
"Sir can you sell me a sandwich?" He was impressed
with my politeness (There were half a million
polite hippies) and he sold us shrimp salad sandwiches
I was afraid to eat and so I fasted nearly missing being
stuck in line for the Portolet with the runs, giving my
five-dollar sandwich away to a stoned and starving pilgrim.
We walked and we knew we were nearing
the concert when Richie Havens' wail came
echoing off the low dark clouds already gathering, but the rain
held off and we arrived, backpacks and sleeping bags still
dry, finding our tickets unneeded, saving them for the
refund, we arrived on what seemed the rim of an ancient
crater, now a natural stadium-bowl with a giant stage
in the distant core, so far from where we sat
that we saw specks for singers;
but their songs resounded for miles, and the announcers got
on to warn us all against polluted acid--but that's in the movie.
That night, as I tried to sleep in the drizzle, in the clam
my sleeping bag had become, with the image still strong in my
mind of a hundred thousand matches lit all around the
darkened stage, and echoes too of all the voices, chanting
the victory of youth of peace over violence, that night
as I turned onto my back in my bag, half asleep at last,
I felt a sudden thump in my gut.
I cried out as a naked man running amok
trod over me where I lay, and clambering away
he screamed "Where am I? Where the hell am I?"
"The bad acid," said Van. "Are you all right?"
"It feels like I just caught a football in the gut."
The wind knocked out of me at
Woodstock by a tripping hippie,
the drizzle now felt good
on my greasy Unwashed face.
Two days later when we left
we abandoned our sleeping bags
leaving them for Max's tractors,
we could not even begin to think
how to lug the soaking things.
And when we returned to our car,
I realized they were right
who called White Lake
a sudden city:
Van cried out,
"My hubcaps are gone!"
Then, trying to back out of the mud,
he ran over his own tailpipe.
A year or two later, we stupidly
traded in our tickets for the refund.
I don't even want to know
how much they'd be worth now.
But I took away more than the mark
of a maniac's foot. The hippies' high-water--
I was part of it all, if only a droplet so small.