"it's hard to imagine this many people in one place sitting peacefully" woodstock 1969 (as seen on fb)
= new reply since forum marked as read
Maybe it was peace and love for some people, but from what I saw, it was alot of mud and cow manure. Trash everywhere. Tetanus shots needed, ambulances couldn't get in. Hospitals were full. Shortage of medical supplies. Electrical wires were set up in the mud. There were only 600 portable toilets, which could not handle the crowds and began to overflow. Sorry.......
The mess left behind
Thousands Flee Woodstock Chaos Mud
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1969/08/16/Thousands-flee-Woodstock-chaos-mud/5321502589701/
"There's no reason to stay," said one bitter young man as he picked his way through stalled traffic on one highway that was used as a feeder road for the fair.
Early today, promoters of the rock and folks music extravaganza which had drawn an estimated 300,000 youths from throughout the United States issued an emergency appeal for volunteer doctors and medical supplies to cope with the large number of sick.
Additional sheriff's deputies were brought from neighboring Dutchess and Rockland counties to aid state police and Sullivan Count deputies who have had to cope with food and water shortages as well as mud and rain, health problems and traffic conditions.
Late this morning, an unidentified youth sleeping in a sleeping bag in a muddy field was killed by a tractor which ran over him. The sleeping bag was said to be so discolored by the mud the tractor driver was unable to distinguish the youth from the surrounding marsh.
What Woodstock Was Really Like
https://www.aarpethel.com/lifestyle/what-woodstock-1969-was-really-like
We set up our tent in an impromptu campground and went out to meet our neighbors. Well, David and Marty did that. I stayed behind hoping to find a portable toilet without an hours-long wait. I resorted to just squatting in the least-crowded place I could find, surrounded by a few hundred of my new closest friends.
I’d like to say we were prepared, but we weren’t. And I’d like to say I was a good sport about the lack of toilets, open drug use and Mr. Philadelphia Freedom — the dude who swung naked from the scaffolding above us dropping cakes of mud on our head — but I wasn’t. I’d also like to say that being packed like sardines in a crush of humanity without enough food and water — not to mention announcements from the stage admonishing "don’t take the red pills” — didn’t freak me out, but it did. It all did.
I remember David — who eventually retired his guitar and his rock star dreams to become an industrial real estate agent in New Jersey — cajoling me to “just mellow out,” a phrase that to this day triggers me much the way being told to “calm down” does to most women.
Through the years, as Woodstock has faded in the rearview mirror of my life, my memories of it became fonder. Hearing Janis Joplin sing “Piece of My Heart,” transported me to a place deep in my soul — albeit not far enough out of the mud.
I remember the coverage being in color and much clearer.
