At our club meeting on January 2, Charles Shapiro told us about the Woodstock music event 50 years ago. He grew up in upstate New York and was attending college also near Bethel, NY where it took place. It was supposed to be near Woodstock, NY but at the last minute they refused to give the organizers the necessary permits so it moved to a farm near Bethel. The organizers expected about 150,000 to attend but close to 500,000 showed up. The border between Canada and the US was closed to visitors when the traffic towards Bethel became unmanageable.
Charles was a college student and drove to the site with a couple of friends and met others they knew at the event. They brought along a tent(it rained a lot and they managed to stay dry but many did not and left a large amount of soaked sleeping material when they left) and food. He remembered it to be turbulent times in the 1960's with the Cuban crisis, Vietnam war, women's rights issues, environment movement, and the deaths of John F. and Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Oswald.
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Attending a concert that featured a lot of the leading musical groups in that era for many was a way to bring some positives into their lives. The organizers pre-sold tickets for $18 but many did not pay so the organizers lost $1.5 million, but made up for it when they received money from a movie about it later.
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