On the Road to Woodstock -part seven

By the time we made it up to the concession stands it was nearly six o'clock and cooling off quickly. It felt good after the intense heat of the day. John and I went to the ticket stand, and there was a really long line. It took us 15 to 20 minutes just to get up to the head of the line. John got three dollars worth of tickets, and I got five.

The concession stands were unusually crowded, and I heard someone say that they were running out of food. Oh, that would be great. John and I finally made it up to the counter, and the guy said, "We got hot dogs and ice water. That's all."

"Let me get two hot dogs and some ice water," John said to the guy.

"That'll be four bucks."

"Four bucks," John cried out. He turned back to me. " Do you have a dollars worth of tickets that I can borrow?"

Four bucks was a ripoff, but these guys knew they had us. I tore off a dollar's worth of my tickets and handed them to John. He looked at me with a look of gratitude but said nothing.

"Here you go," John said to the guy behind the counter, and he sounded as if he wanted to cuss the guy out. John handed him the tickets and got his hot dogs and water, and I moved up to the counter.

"Two hot dogs and some ice water," I said, and handed the guy my tickets. I got my food and moved away from the counter and joined up with John.

"Motherfuckers," John said under his breath. He sounded angry, and I didn't blame him.

"I know. This is fucked up." I was angry, too.

We walked over to the grassy area where we had sat earlier, and sat down. John scarfed both his hot dogs down before I had even eaten one of mine. I finished my hot dog, and then I split the other one with John and washed it all down with the ice water. They tasted crappy, but it felt good to get something on my stomach.

John yawned and said, "Let's go down and see if our sleeping bags are dry. I feel like lying down for a while."

That sounded like a good idea to me. "Okay," I said. "Do you remember which way to go?"

"Sort of, I think," John said. He headed back through the concession stands, and I followed him closely. It was very crowded, and I didn't want to lose him. We eventually made it back to the deep mud, which meant we were on the right track. Again, I had to squeeze my feet up tight inside my boots to keep them from being pulled off as I marched slowly through the mucky mess.

After reaching dry ground, we made it down the hill to the dirt road where we had come into the concert area from the main road. "Look for that big tree where we slept last night," I said to John.

"Which way you think it is?" he asked.

I looked both ways. "I don't know. Let's try this way first." I motioned with my head to the right. I wasn't sure, but it felt as if it were the right direction.

We walked side-by-side down the road looking for the tree, and pretty soon I saw what I thought was the tree we had slept under. "Is that it?" I asked John.

"It looks like it," he said. He sounded unsure.

We got a bit closer, and I said, "Yeah, that's it."

"Are you sure? John asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Okay then, our sleeping bags should be over here." John started walking towards the fence where we had hung them up to dry, and I joined him. I could see there were still quite a few sleeping bags still hanging on the fence.

When we got to the fence, we started looking for our sleeping bags. First we walked down one way and then the other, but we couldn't find them. We checked again, but they weren't there.

"Somebody ripped us off," John said. "Can you believe that?"

"Oh man," I said. "What are we going to do?" There was despair in my voice.

"I don't know," John said. He didn't sound as concerned.

For the first time since arriving at the concert, I began to feel scared. I began to bite my bottom lip.

"Don't worry, Johnny Lee, we'll be all right," John said to me. As there were two Johns in our family, Johnny Lee was what my nickname was. John, when he was younger, was called John-John. He grew out of John-John, but Johnny Lee had stuck with me, and I didn't like the name at all. He put his hand on my shoulder. "I know it's shitty we got ripped off, but we'll be okay."

I felt comforted by the feel of John's hand on my shoulder and by his words of encouragement. "So what do we do now?"

"Let's just hang out for a while. Check out the people. If we ask around, I'm sure someone'll help us out."

I wasn't so sure about that, but I was willing to try. I looked around, and there were tents as far as I could see. Maybe John was right.

"I'm gonna walk down this way." John motioned with his head down towards where we had originally come in. "Why don't you check out over there?" He pointed with his finger over where another bunch of tents stood. "We'll meet back here in half an hour."

I didn't much like the idea splitting up, but as long as we had a plan to meet back together, I figured it would be okay. "All right," I said to John. "We'll meet back here in half an hour." Then I thought of something. "But you don't have a watch."

"I know what a half an hour feels like. Don't worry. I'll be here."

"Okay," I said. He was right. It was easy enough to gauge a half an hour. I felt reassured.

"See you in half an hour," he said. He started walking off.

I kind of felt at a loss of what to do, but I headed off into the direction John had told me. I looked at my watch, and it was a little after seven. It wouldn't be that long before sunset, maybe in an hour or so.

I walked around through the tents and checked out the people. Some had started small campfires for cooking, and others were just hanging out. I saw quite a few joints and pipes being passed around, and the smell of pot and hashish mingled with the smell of the burning wood from the campfires. Some of the guys looked pretty straight with fairly short hair while others looked about as hippie as one could get with long hair and mustaches and beads around their necks. It was pretty much the same with the girls. Some looked pretty much like regular high school girls while others were dressed in some of the most outlandish clothing that I'd ever seen and had long hair in elaborate braids. The age differences of both sexes varied quite a bit, as well. Though I never saw anyone as young as I was, the ages seemed to go from the teens to the twenties and thirties.

I tried to get up the nerve to approach one of the people that were hanging around the tents, but I was much too shy. I looked at my watch, and it was getting close enough to being half an hour to head back to the rendezvous point.

John wasn't there, yet, so I sat down and leaned my back against the tree. The bark was rough against my back and a bit uncomfortable, but it provided a reasonably good resting spot. I watched the people walking this way and that on the road and all around and kept an eye out for John. I kept checking my watch, and a half hour came and went. I began to get worried. What if John didn't come back? What's if he had gotten lost? What if he had gotten hurt? I was thinking of a dozen things that could have gone wrong, when John came up seemingly out of nowhere.

"Oh man, am I glad to see you," I said to him. I stood up. "Where've you been?" I was to relieved to sound angry at his tardiness.

"I met a couple of girls who have a tent who said they'd help us out." He smiled at me with a bit of a grin.

Suddenly my mind ran wild with fantasies of spending the night in a tent with two girls, but my shyness shooed those thoughts away. What did I know to do with a girl in a tent overnight?

"Come on," John said. He motioned at me with his arm.

I walked along behind John kind of afraid to meet the girls. We got to the tent and one girl was heavyset and had long black hair, and the other was slim and very pretty with long wavy blond hair. The big girl smiled a lot and was very outgoing while the other girl seemed shy and reserved. She didn't smile much at all.

"Johnny Lee, this is Sherry and Linda." He pointed at the pretty girl and the big girl respectively.

I was embarrassed that he introduced me as Johnny Lee. "Hi," was all I could say.

The girls had a blanket spread out in front of their tent that they were sitting on. "Have a seat, guys," Linda said. She patted her hand on the blanket. John and I sat down with them, and while John and Linda talked a little bit about the concert and its goings-on, Sherry and I just sort of sat there together listening to the music.

There was still plenty of music coming from the stage area from over the hill. There was lots of recorded music being played over the PA system between bands and announcements, and it could be heard fairly well, though I didn't hear any bands that I recognized, but there were lots of cheers and applause from the crowd on the hill.

The sun set behind a cornfield off to our right turning the sky first a burnt orange then a red that turn darker into a purple and then a deep blue that gave way to the blackest of nights. All four of us lay back on our backs, and I looked at the most incredible display of stars that I'd ever seen. I could even see the Milky Way, only the second time in my life that I'd seen it.

The girls ended up sleeping in the tent, and they gave us some blankets to sleep on and to cover up with, and John and I lay talking for a while looking up at the stars. There was still music playing from the stage, but as I began to get sleepy it started to sound far away, and it echoed throughout the night as I slept.