Yes. I went with my father who was with the Onondaga County Sherrif's Dept. and my younger sister. I think the theory was that she would protect me from my 17 year old impulses. That worked ok, though younger she was way more mature.
We got there on Friday morning while they were still building the stage. The muddy pit you see in the later photos was actually alfalfa, wet with dew, and soaked my bell bottoms up to the knees as I made a beeline to the stage area. They wouldn't let me in to look around.
By then people were arriving, but it all looked pretty sane at that point. (hey, it was over 50 years ago). We got close to the stage, which was a mistake, and saw Ravi Shankar, Melanie, and Arlo Guthrie. It rained by then and they stopped Ravi Shankar's performance to dump an accumulation of water from a large tarplike thing, which was over the stage to protect the perfoemers. I don't remember who else played, people were passing skinny cigarettes around, and I was concentrating on getting myself out of that huge crowd, which seemed to have grown exponentially in the 3 or 4 hours we were up front. We slepped in a police car that night.
The following day the thought of getting close enough to see anything on stage was out of the question, so we wandered around all day. The thing is, they had such a huge sound system you didn;t need to be near it to hear clear as a bell. And, there were plenty of interesting things to explore in this counter culture convention; nude women to gawk at, numerous venders selling stuff I'd only seen in hippie type publications, recreational drug vendors hawking their products in loud voices, some of the most bizarre people I'd ever seen, etc. We got a free meal from The Hog Farmers; some sort of brown rice mush, and some free water, which was in short supply. As background music to this were Santana, Mountain, Janis Joplin,Sly, and The Who (at least those are the ones I remember).. We slept in a different police car that night.
Sunday was more of the same, with Joe Cocker. Ten Years After, and Crosby Stills and Nash. Then we were informed that we were going back to Syracuse on Monday morning, and I missed Jimi Hendrix, unfortunately. However, my sister and I didn't have to sleep in a police car that night because the county (Dutchess?) had paid for a bunch of motel rooms for the out of town cops nearby, and they had a few leftovers, which we appreciated. Appreciated isn't quite accurate. We'd been trudging around for 3 days, half starved and dehydrated, exhausted to the bone, soaked to the skin, dirty, and saturated with enough hippie culture to last for years. A swim in the pool and a decent meal were all it took to get semi-human again. Such luxury!
I've still got the tickets, and some pretty fond memorys. One thing I missed was, having the idea that out of so many bands, surely one or two might have missplaced a guitar player, and this would be my big break. Fat chance. Oh well.
Tom
