I ‘ve been trying for the last six years to persuade friends to post a guest blog on this site – without any success. Then, as they say about buses, from none we move to two blog offers in a week. It’s not that I don’t get offers of guest blogs it’s just that the ones I do get I don’t want.
In the last month I’ve had two other offers. One from a company wanting to put a blog on my site about their financial services to the elderly and the other about property investments or some such, again for my demographic. I wasn’t interested in either being on my site but I was still keen on guest blogs of the right kind.
Then I read this Facebook entry from an old friend. His wife and I used to work together on our first exchange programme in Rockville, Maryland in 1978 / 79. We’ve remained spasmodically in touch ever since. He’s retired and his wife has not. Unlike Mrs Summerhouse and I who retired at the same time. I’ve written a blog quite a while ago about the pros and cons of retiring together.
When I read his Facebook page I thought it would be nice to publish it on my blog in that looking back from retirement category that figures on these pages. If you want to have something to look back on with affection you’d have to go a long way to find a better or more iconic event. Just reminds me how sensible we were back then to do those things that seemed far from sensible at the time. There’s a huge pleasure in recounting the things we did. I try to limit the number of blogs in the looking back with rose-tinted glasses category but I’ll make an exception for this one. The words in italics are my friend’s.
It’s hard to believe that in less than two weeks it will be the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Arts Festival in Bethel, New York. I left my hometown of Westbury, NY on Long Island with seven high school friends for the festival just one day before my 16th birthday. We were too young to drive, so we took the Long Island Railroad into New York City, the NYC Subway to the Port Authority Bus Station in Manhattan, a Greyhound bus to Monticello, NY and then hitchhiked the final 10 miles to the festival site.
A New York Times reporter came to interview us and friends Neal Sobel and Rob Spevack gave them an interesting account (see yellow highlight in a reprint of the article). The unattributed quote at the very end of the article was from Steven Sobel. The photo in the lower right corner is of then 15-year-old Harvey Silverman, may he rest in peace.
We had already bought tickets and didn’t find out it had been declared a free event until we arrived the day before the music was scheduled to start on August 15,1969. We were in the early wave of people to arrive.
That weekend was certainly one of the highlights of my life up to that point in time and still is. My memories of each and every day are photographic. The Boulder Daily Camera newspaper interviewed me in 2009 for an article on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock (see https://www.dailycamera.com/…/boulder-area-residents-remem…/). The same newspaper just interviewed me again several days ago. The 1960s…what times they were!
I’ve not been able to include the same image my friend put on his post so I found a stock image of Woodstock, but you get the idea. Thanks Bruce.
PS. I do have a Woodstock equivalent. At about the same age I went to see Them* (before Van Morrison was famous) at The Golden Egg in Ilkeston. You had to be there. My friend and I and about 3 other people were.
PPS I’ve now included the image my friend sent me, this one seems to download OK. See below. That’s him with the brolly.
*You’d have to be of a certain age to remember Them.