FESTIVAL PROBLEMS AND THE LOCALS

There are so many memories I have of Woodstock that I hardly know where to begin. There are several chapters dedicated to the festival in detail, but you will have to wait until the book, Between the Devil and the Deep…, comes out. It will be soon.

The festival organizers were treated very poorly. The “I don’t want those hippy, druggies, long haired kids with their rock music in our area because they will get our children on dope” syndrome, was really active. They did not realize that it was too late to keep drugs out of Middletown. They were not on hard drugs like cocaine or Heron, but marijuana and pills (uppers and downers)were being used by some teenagers of the city.

They were denied the City of Woodstock so the moved to the township of Wallkill, near Middletown, New York. Here they started to set up the area and I’m not sure if it was May or June began to construct the stage. The folks in Middletown did not like having them near, so they and the township, began passing laws to keep them out.

Now Middletown had a race track for cars. This event was across town from where I lived. Every Saturday night, until the wee hours in the morning they roared and kept me from having a good sleep. Yet the townspeople passed a law that said it was illegal to have any event where the noise might go outside its boundaries, the race track excepted.

This law was clearly unconstitutional, but it would have taken the organizers months to fight it out, so they moved. This was a Godsend.

They were not able to put up fences in time for the opening and since they expected no more that 20 thousand, so when 400,000 showed up, it would have caused trouble and riots.

I hate to say this, but the church where I assisted was one of those who objected to the event. I was forced to resign if I wanted to be chaplain at Woodstock