Caddie Memmelaar, Woodstock

One of the largest musical events in our nation's history, and certainly the most controversial, occurred Aug. 15-18, 1969, at a dairy farm in Sullivan County, New York, and has been known ever since simply as "Woodstock."

Woodstock was billed as the world's largest musical concert, with 32 of the nation's most popular folk and rock bands and performers, playing music nearly non-stop for an entire weekend. A few of the artists who performed at Woodstock included, Jimi Hendricks, Sly & The Family Stone, The Grateful Dead, The Who, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Crosby Stills, Nash, & Young, Woody Guthrie and The Jefferson Airplane.

The event attracted nearly 500,000 enthusiastic young listeners, who camped out under the stars, for one gigantic party. In the years since that concert in 1969, probably a million more people have claimed that they were at Woodstock, but were not. One fellow, who was at that concert, but does not brag about the fact, was Caddie Memmelaar, who later played football at McCook College, married a local girl, stayed in this part of the country, and now is a businessman in Atwood.

Early in 1969, John Roberts and Joel Koseman, a couple of venture capitalists, put an ad in the Wall Street Journal, announcing that they had unlimited funds and would be interested in backing an unconventional investment opportunity for fun and profit. Michael Lang and Artie Kornfield answered the ad and presented the rough outline for a mammoth Music and Art Fair, to be held at Woodstock, N.Y., in the Catskill Mountains. The original plan was to attract from 50,000 to 100,000 patrons from all over the East.

The four entrepreneurs encountered problems with the Woodstock location and eventually rented Max Yasgur's 600 acre dairy farm, some 48 miles southwest of Woodstock, near the town to Bethel, as the site for the concert.

The four had done a good job of securing bands for the festival, and getting the word out about the affair, and had sold some 186,000 advance tickets (at $18 each) by opening day. Problems set in immediately when additional thousands of festival goers, without tickets, showed up for the event. Fences were cut and people swarmed into the grounds, making Woodstock after that a "Free Concert."

With an unpopular military conflict abroad and racial discord at home serving as lightening rods for young people, almost 500,000 people attended the event, 10 times the number originally anticipated. Woodstock was variously described as "A Counter-Culture Nation," with the slogan of "Peace and Music" or "The festival that exemplified the counter-culture (Hippie) movement of the '60s and '70s," and "The Greatest Moment in Popular Music History."

Minds were open, drugs were available, love was free.

The 500,000 Woodstock partygoers completely swamped the system. Cars on Interstate 87 caused such a traffic-jam that the New York Thruway was closed down. Roads leading to Mr. Yasgur's farm were clogged for miles. People simply abandoned their vehicles and proceeded to the concert on foot. Once at the concert they didn't leave, for four days.

They struggled against bad weather (it rained, off and on, sometimes coming down very hard). There were food and water shortages, and poor sanitation facilities, and a shortage of first aid tents (organizers had planned for snack food and porta-potties for 200,000 and more than twice that many showed up.)

Still, considering the huge number of people, the Woodstock Festival was remarkably peaceful. People shared their food, drink with complete strangers, and reportedly were uncommonly patient with the inconveniences that everyone faced.

There were two deaths at the Festival. One fellow died of a heroin overdose, another (possibly in a drugged state) took his sleeping bag into hayfield, lay down to sleep, and was killed when he was run over by a tractor.

There were two births confirmed at Woodstock, one baby delivered in a car caught in the giant traffic-jam, the other delivered in the helicopter that was taking the mother to the hospital. There were also four miscarriages reported.

On the second day of the festival, Caddie Memmelaar, and one of his buddies, who lived at Goshen, N.Y., only 20 miles from Max Yasgur's farm, decided that it might be interesting to attend the event that was getting such wide-spread coverage in the media. Driving on back roads, they were able to avoid the huge traffic-jams, but still had to park more than a mile from the site of the concert, and trudge up and around a long hill on foot in order to see and hear the musicians.

What greeted Caddie and his friend when they finally got to the concert site was a sea of people, all of whom seemed to be in a state of intoxication -- high on music, alcohol, drugs or all three. People were soaked from the rain, some in various stages of undress. One fellow, obviously under-aged, with a bottle in his hand, approached the two and began to ask them something. His speech was incoherent. He swayed for a moment then fell over backwards, out like a light. The boys dragged him to a tree, propped him up and turned to leave, when they saw a policeman. When they asked why the officer did not arrest that fellow, or some of the others, his reply was, "What would I do with them? We can't even get an automobile in here to take out the injured!"

Caddie and his friend did not stay long at the Woodstock concert. The music was good and they were pleased to see some of the famous musicians, in person, but the excesses that were in evidence all around them were unsettling. Forty years later Caddie described his feelings at that time, "This is my generation on display. What kind of world are we going to have when people who act like this get in charge of things?"

Max Yasgur, the fellow who owned the farm where Woodstock was staged, saw the event as "a victory of peace and love." A few days after the mammoth concert ended he issued a statement, "Nearly half- million people, with possibilities of disaster, riots, looting, and catastrophe, instead spent three days with music and peace on their minds. If we join them we can turn those diversities that are problems for America today into a hope for a brighter and more peaceful future."