Woodstock in a Whirlwind
...page 3

I t was baffling. But over the fanciful dinner we had at the Blue Mountain Bistro, Andrew and his wife explained to me that after the historical event of the 60s people from all over the country flocked to Woodstock, just for shopping or moving in for good. They would leave the big city and buy or build a house in Woodstock, both because it was a nice area, but also because they wanted to be associated with the Woodstock appellation. There had been a boom of construction going on. Andrew himself was actually a graduate in psychology with an exciting life behind, as an opera stage manager, who toured the country for almost a decade, but who came to Woodstock wanting a change to a settled life. I teased him saying he actually followed the crowd of the new believers in "Enough thinking back to the muscles! " But he said he had turned to I construction because he decided psychologist was a dumb profession. "Who wants to see all the time unhappy people? If you build a house you have immediate satisfaction. People thank you and pay you. I also got tired of traveling with theater people, when I could know many places and people, but only superficially. Now, living in one place, I learned to value the deeper knowing of fewer people. But who knows, maybe I am rationalizing a rather boring life he told me in his quiet, soft manner. His life doesn't seem boring, though I can't tell how he managed to, since I would go bananas after a month of his life style. For one thing Andrew was interesting with his fight against "unequal taxation" that is when property owners are billed and pay far more than their fair share. It inspired me to hear how since 1986, he filed 23 lawsuits, with over 500 properties involved, against towns and tax assessors. Guess what: 9 of them have been won, none lost, 14 pending, since each takes 2 to 5 years to wend its way through the court to conclusion. So he is busy. He lives in a house in the woods where you step on soft thick paths of white pine needles. There isn't such a thing as locked doors in Woodstock.

I was curious how the young people of Woodstock felt like, remembering my own adolescence when I felt trapped in my own hometown and wanted to run to the big city, which was by far smaller than NYC. I wanted to know if parents worried about their children leaving their nest. Yes, they did, said Andrew. But many of the children, when it came down to raising their own kids, tended to get back to peaceful Woodstock, where doors are not locked and people look for exotic spiritual experiences.

Chloe, Andrew's wife told me about how fun it was to go to the African dance class where drums made dance a hypnotic experience. One teacher had once danced herself into a trance, said Chloe seriously. "Come on," I laughed incredulous but also amused by this charming woman who could say such inanities. "Yes, yes, she said, searching for her words to define the feeling. "Poor girl," I thought, "Well it's understandable. Her parents were mystery writers and she likes phantasmagorias. Listen to her, you judgmental Ella." "I remember once we were running and suddenly we realized we could run on and on so easy it seemed. There was no effort anymore. I wonder why we stopped running at all. We could have gone on running even today...." And they were sitting there beaming above the aubergine salad. I couldn't tell if this couple was in love or mad. I couldn't decide if I envied or pitied them. But they were real estate owners. Quite successful ones. Maybe I was mad. Or had missed the revolution....

This mixture of real estate business and hippie naive ecstasy was specific to Woodstock. In Blue Mailbox, a comedy written and produced by a good natured, live-the-instant Woodstockian team, which we saw after dinner at the local Byrdcliffe Theater, locals made fun of themselves. The play was stating that the solving of one's financial entanglements could be a bit of make love not war philosophy and why not, a joint.

I know what was funny/peculiar about Woodstock: people had to adapt their behavior to outsiders' expectations. At the time of the 'legendary Woodstock concert local people didn't understand what was going on, said Chloe. Most of them even didn't go to the concert. They would prevent each other by saying, "Oh! It is an impossible gathering. Just a crowd splashing with mud and getting promiscuous." But in the aftermath when waves of newcomers assaulted the town, wanting to live there or simply to see the Mecca of liberation, buy a souvenir to be able to tell, "I bought this from Woodstock!" locals saw the business in it and started to build and sell houses, make souvenirs, offer miraculous cures for le mal d'etre, and even adopt stray cats like Russ , a tourist attraction character in town who has a button reading "Here to amuse the tourists."

If you go out early in the morning in town there are chances to meet him while he deposits the collected bottles into the big machine there, which sucks them in and with a huge grinding (cans) or loud crashing/crushing (bottles) prepares them for the recycling company, then spits out 5 cents per item. He might have in his pocket a copy of the Kingston Freeman photo with a jumbled up caption: "Made in the Shade: 'Cowboy' Kulchinsky of Woodstock takes shelter from this week's hot sun under a tree on the town center's Village Green. With temperatures expected to stay in the 80s and 90s for several days, shady spots and air conditioned buildings will be in high demand."

Continued...