A little Buckland birdie gave me a call Sunday. He was responding to an unintentional call placed by my wife from our caller-ID directory. She hit the speed-dial, noticed it was the wrong number and hung up before anyone answered. It went through and left our number on the recipient’s caller-ID, so he called right back and I answered; Red Sox-Blue Jays game on the tube; refreshing pre-autumn breeze wafting through the parlor.

“Hi Hezzie,” I said. “Did the fellas ride you about your comments in my last column? I didn’t name you but I knew it would be no mystery to the boys at Fox Towne (Coffee Shop).”

He chuckled, comfortable in his skin.

“Don’t ever change, Bags, please,” he said. “I got a kick out of it. It’s no secret around here where I stand.”

The subject changed quickly, right to the previous day’s Kennedy funeral; what a powerful event it had been, the legions along the road, average people waving goodbye. I told him I had thrice seen young Teddy tell his tale of losing a leg and Sen. Kennedy telling him they were going to climb the hill together if it took them all day; that I could not control my emotions the first time or last, far too overpowering. He understood.

“The tears seem to come easier the older you get,” he confessed. “I don’t know why. They just do.”

Then it dawned on me: Hezzie had been a state man, an active Democrat; he must have met Teddy somewhere along the way.

“Funny you’d ask,” he said. “I spent yesterday afternoon searching for a signature of his that I saved from Mohawk Park. We kept the receipts around the office in a ledger for a couple of years. Then we’d throw them out. Well, that year I went through the ones we were discarding, pulled Kennedy’s out and took it home with me. I know it’s here somewhere. When I find it, I’m gonna frame it and hang it up.”

He couldn’t remember all the details of the weekend Kennedy visit but figured it was probably soon after Bobby had been assassinated. Teddy came into Mohawk Park in a camper, “like a Winnebago,” stayed for a couple days, “probably Friday and Saturday,” and had a tribe of kids with him, Bobby’s and his own.

“Maybe, even, Bobby and Ethel were there, too,” he said. “But I don’t believe so. I know their kids were. Bobby was probably gone and Ted had them.”

Teddy rented a cabin and spent a couple of days entertaining the kids around the confluence of the Cold and Deerfield rivers, swimming, picnicking; happy-go-lucky, pleasant to deal with.

“I wanted to give him a freebie but he wouldn’t hear of it,” Hezzie said, “insisted on paying, cash.”

At one point during the stay, the kids got a little frisky, throwing stones into the Deerfield River like kids do, and one of them hit the bath house.

“They were good kids, didn’t mean any harm,” Hezzie said. “But you know kids.”

Me? Yeah, I know. Used to be one.

Anyway, the startling sound of that stone hitting the building attracted everyone’s attention. Teddy didn’t overreact, order a timeout, get out the whipping stick, or even raise his voice. “No,” Hezzie recalled, “he just calmly said something like, ‘Boys, we must be more careful. What would we ever have done if that stone had broken a window?’”

End of story, indelible, Franklin folklore circa ’68.

Kennedy mystique.

I recently befriended an interesting octogenarian, I think 87, spry, a collector of coins, stamps and other stuff. His name is Harry. He considers me a good friend. I’ve had him to my home, helped him out with eBay, taken him for rides, stopping on whims to meet people in the hills of Conway and Ashfield while poking around old roads, probing cellar holes. He’s fun to be with, great company, lots to offer, loves local history, conversation.

I’ve known Harry maybe a year and avoid political discussion like the swine flu. The hints have been there from the start that we are not political soul mates. Far from it. So why go there?

The other night I called him to check if an order I placed on eBay had arrived in a timely fashion. It had. Then he delivered a dire warning to a trusted friend: our country is in very serious trouble, Obama must go. Our president is the agent for a communist takeover, has been planted from afar, serious stuff, could be the end of America as we know it; never again land of the free, home of the brave. Obama’s here to orchestrate a coup, dismantle free enterprise.

Just the other day Harry received a letter in the mail. There’s a movement afoot to impeach Obama. We must unite and get it done. Listen to Glenn Beck. He’s on every night at 5, the most watched man in the world; trusted, too. He knows what’s going on and is brave enough to expose it. Every night on TV. Tune in. Very serious. It’ll happen before we know what hit us. Then it’ll be too late.

Harry didn’t hesitate to to issue the warning; said because it’s on TV, it has to be true. You can’t just tell lies on television. It’s illegal. Beck knows what he’s talking about. He’s trying to save us.

Don’t get me wrong. Harry is a good man, a sweet yellow peach, salt of the earth. He means well, loves his country, has a big picture of the Virgin Mary in his apartment, and has been twisted by the right-wing propaganda machine. The stuff they’re saying should be illegal. That’s for sure. It isn’t. It’s pure manipulation based on lies. Very sad what America has become, what Reagan and the Bushes allowed Rupert Murdoch to do in the name of freedom of speech and the press, both inalienable rights, to build a corporate-media behemoth of misinformation.

I fear where it’s leading. I really do. Take a look at these gun-toting crackpots in the street, listen to the Tucson, Ariz., preacher praying for Obama’s death by the same brain cancer that took Teddy Kennedy, building a frothy flock along the way. They too want our president dead and aren’t afraid to say so publicly; would like him arrested and executed for murder of the unborn; call for it on mainstream radio talk.

It’s frightening. It’s serious. It must be stopped.

It’s interesting how column fodder sometimes arrives like sweet lilac scent delivered through the bay window by a subtle breeze-shift, no warning, this week a classic example.

There I was, sitting in my study, kicking off a new week, thinking about potential subjects, considering a weird Atlantic salmon development. Yes, it seems our regal, North Atlantic, anadromous fish are appearing where no one expects them — France’s Seine and New York’s Salmon rivers — while the well-heeled, half-century-old Connecticut River restoration program teeters on extinction, can’t buy a break. Go figure: target a river, no dice; ignore it, they come. Pack that in your bong and smoke it.

As I lean back relaxed, feet up, trying to get started, pondering an angle, the lede (yes, itching to procrastinate), I remember to make a quick insurance call to a friend. The receptionist hooks me up. I identify myself. He’s astonished: “Wow. I just sent you an e-mail. Read it. … Scary.”

I open my Inbox, it’s on top, a familiar subject: dire warning about “secret” Senate Bill SB-2099. If passed — surreptitiously, dark of night — gun owners will be forced to itemize weapons on their next tax return, pay 50 bucks for each. The implication is that, once itemized, weapons will be easier to confiscate when that inevitable day arrives. It’s a tired conspiracy theory perpetuated with zeal by the National Rifle Association. I tell my friend I’ve already seen it, am suspicious, so much so that I haven’t even Googled it. When it first came to my attention two weeks back, I dismissed it; figured, if real, I would have heard something, or soon would. My curiosity piqued, I hang up and Google it. Sure enough, a hoax, listed among urban legends on snopes.com, a Web site where I’ve found past e-mail cougar hoaxes. Even the NRA admits there’s no truth to the story. I’m not surprised. The whole thing reeked of fraud. I have fine-tuned my gray-haired nostrils for this type of stuff. This one didn’t pass the initial whiff test.

With that issue resolved, I go triumphantly to the kitchen to freshen my coffee. Once there, I head to the west parlor for papers that needed to come back to the study with me. As I pass through the threshold, the phone rings. The caller ID tells me it’s another West County acquaintance, this one a rare bird, rare indeed, a longstanding Buckland Democrat; a Yankee, no less, even rarer. He wants to know if I received his e-mail. Had I read the letter he sent to Wayne F. MacCallum, director of the state Division of Fisheries & Wildlife. Speaking on behalf of the Conway Sportsmen’s Club, he wrote to insist that dedicated funds generated by sales of hunting and fishing licenses continue to be spent only on related ventures. I tell him I glanced through it, not carefully, but would revisit. He promptly changes the subject, launches into a tirade aimed at the creeps we’ve all been seeing on TV displaying their guns at presidential appearances and widespread town-hall meetings about national health-care reform.

The good man is stirred up, fearful; you can sense it in his voice. He says he hopes these idiots don’t think they’re doing gun owners any favors. If anything, they’re hurting us all. He can’t imagine anyone justifying citizens standing outside of presidential events with loaded weapons strapped to their sides. He says they’re Ku Klux Klan and John Birch Republicans, very dangerous: “How can anyone defend this behavior? I’m almost ashamed to say that. I’ve been a gun owner and hunter my whole life, have never been for gun control, but this is absurd … insane.”

He probably knows he’s preaching to the choir. The subject has been dominant in my mind as well, fires me up every time I see those yahoos “packing heat” on the streets, holding up protest signs. My view is that 50 short years ago these bigots were burning crosses and marching in lynch mobs. Now they’re running the Republican Party, poisoning the media and acting frighteningly belligerent in the name of almighty God. Still, I’m surprised to hear a septuagenarian country boy from Buckland parroting my sentiments; he an avid hunter who cherishes his right to bear arms. There is hope, I think. These militia types are frightening everyone, not just me. Others know they’re providing red meat for the anti-gun, anti-hunting lobby; threatening everyone’s right to own firearms. I believe that. How can anyone with an IQ higher than their shoe size support these whackos’ confrontational behavior? They represent our Founding Fathers’ worst nightmare: rule by the rabble. It’s Madame Defarge breathing fire through automatic weapons, terrifying imagery.

Let us not deceive ourselves. This is not about health-care reform or taxes or gun rights; it’s about racism and intimidation, pure and simple; a combative reaction to a new electorate with the audacity to elect our first black president. The worst Americans among us cannot cope with it, feel like they’re losing their white-knuckled grip on the status quo, are backed into a corner, sort of like they were feeling in the Sixties. They won’t go down without a fight. It could get ugly.

I truly fear someone’s going to get killed. I was there during the Sixties, saw the Kennedys, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X assassinated, others gunned down in the streets, on campus, by law enforcement. It could happen again; has already with George Tiller, the abortion doctor murdered in a church, and the guard killed at the Holocaust Museum. It’s horrific stuff. The Republican politicians beating the drums to which Rush, O’Reilly, Beck and Hannity march in lockstep should be flogged. They’re calling liberals fascists, Nazis, communists, tyrants and worse. They know better. They’re propagandists, experts at blurring the -isms Joe the Plumber has never understood or been trained to philosophically compare. Look it up: fascism was not a liberal movement. It was a right-wing, reactionary response to the threat of communism, socialism and organized labor. Hitler didn’t hate Judaism; he hated the political Jews behind the Communist Manifesto, many others who were intellectually sympathetic to the proletariat, and, of course, those who led the Russian Revolution and struck fear into capitalist Europe. Out of this threat came nationalist movements that spawned Hitler, Franco and Mussolini, all experts at whipping mobs into a frothy lather. The rest is history.

The behavior of our right-wing demagogues today is inflammatory and disgusting. The wingnuts flaunting weapons around political events should be hauled off in paddy wagons, just like the peaceful, unarmed demonstrators who were whisked away from anywhere within a mile of our woeful previous “decider.” This cannot go on. It’s ridiculous, counter-productive for law-abiding citizens who love to hunt, shoot skeet or own guns for protection.

Lynch mobs don’t deserve guns no matter how much red, white and blue they wave; how loud they chant liberty and freedom. Don’t forget that the Confederate flag was also red, white and blue. Don’t confuse these “Birthers,” “Tea Partiers” or “Liberty Tree” nutbags with Patriots from our glorious past. They’re not Patriots. They’re bigots; Rebel brown shirts and Lone Star loons.

Why sugarcoat it? They’re dangerous.

I was listening to WEEI the morning after Ted Kennedy’s passing, sitting on the tailgate, dogs sniffing around through fresh-cut clover, right-wing bores taking their mean-spirited shots at the late senator, fouling otherwise refreshing air. Finally, it got to me. I thought to myself, “You, Dennis and Callahan, are not in the same stratosphere with Teddy, as men or human beings. You’re no more than shallow carnival barkers playing to the old Southie anti-bussing crowd, not a trace of depth to your opinions, no decency in your souls; babbling idiots.”

I returned home, parked in front of the carriage sheds, walked to the flag pole and lowered my flag to half-staff, something I have never before done. That’s what D&C did for me.

So, yeah, I guess I am political, after all … and, at the moment, quite proud of it.

Uh-oh, a friend was fact-checking my copy, testing the memory of a raw, 16-year-old observer who was then more interested in hitting baseballs than defining life.

The phone call came from Bethel, N.Y., Saturday night about 7:30, pregame show, Red Sox-Rangers, on the tube. Friend and dentist Mark Wisniewski was on his cell. He, wife Nora and daughter Bree were attending Woodstock 2009, the 40th reunion of the iconic “Summer of Love” concert. Seems they’d been trying all day to substantiate facts from the story I had published a few days earlier about attending the infamous 1969 concert as a twisted teen. It had been just the previous day that “Dr. Mark” had pulled into my driveway around 11 a.m., big cigar, upbeat as always, trying to entice me and my wife to join him for the ride. No such luck. I was working a rare Friday night and my wife was on her way to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom for a family gathering. There would be no Woodstock reunion for me, stag or otherwise.

The caller ID showed who rang. I knew it had to be live from Bethel, probably a “you-don’t-know-what-you’re-missing” call, and it was, sort of. The good doctor estimated 20,000 in attendance, a far cry from the half-million in ’69. Country Joe and the Fish was playing in the background; good, but Big Brother and the Holding Company had been superb. The female vocalist hit the highest notes he could remember hearing, and Dr. Mark gets around, has been to a few gigs over the years; my kind of dentist, even when he’s poking and prodding below the gum-line.

Truth was my friend hadn’t called to critique the bands, though. No, he was vetting my story, had been asking around, trying to conceptualize the layout, having difficulty. He shouldn’t have been surprised. I had warned readers that I couldn’t remember every minute detail, just certain anecdotal events burned deep into my memory. Forty years is a huge gap to fill when trying to reconstruct scenes relying on the blurred memory of a teen with an unsophisticated eye for detail. I wasn’t at Woodstock as a writer or commentator. I was just traipsing about, a bit impaired, on a footloose lark; no one to tell me what to do or where I couldn’t go; autonomy I had only dreamt.

Anyway, after telling me how much he wished I had accompanied him, that he was having a blast but it would mean more to me, Dr. Mark jumped right into his probe, nowhere near as invasive as removing mercury amalgams. Maybe things had changed since ’69 but he hadn’t been able to find the bar I had written about, or the small center of town where it sat. He had asked many ’69 concert veterans and no one seemed to recall a bar. How far away was it, anyway? Did I recall? When I guessed a quarter- to half-mile, he was bemused. Something didn’t add up. I had described the bar as located among a little cluster of small homes. The only place that fit that description was three or four miles away. Oh yeah, and he hadn’t seen a pond anywhere, just a river far in the horizon behind the stage. No, it wasn’t a river behind the stage. It was a mud hole on the other side of town, not far off the road. That was confirmed a few days later, when I saw a photo on the bulletin board at Clarkdale Fruit Farm in West Deerfield; just as I remembered. Tom Clark remembered it, too. But, let’s not digress. Back to the interrogation.

Did I remember what direction I had traveled from the concert to town? Yes, that I could say for sure. The town was behind me and to the right. He explained that he had arrived in Bethel from that direction and again, unless the settlement had moved, the only cluster of homes he passed was nearly four miles from the concert. Although I couldn’t remember walking that far, it wasn’t impossible. A four-mile walk wouldn’t have been outrageous to me as a teen. I had hoofed it my whole life before receiving my first driver’s license some six weeks before Woodstock, so it’s conceivable it had been a four-mile trek. I just had no recollection of any extraordinary distance. I guess it wasn’t important in the bigger picture. Many people walked 20 miles just to get to Max Yasgur’s Farm after the highway had been closed. I felt fortunate.

Before hanging up, Dr. Mark repeated that he wished I had been there to help him scope out the place, investigate the scene of my teenage adventure. He loves that kind of activity. Me, too. I guess that’s why we’re friends. I suspected I hadn’t heard the last of him. Just a hunch, but I knew his discovery mission was ongoing. Sooner or later he’d figure things out; likely sooner. That’s him: persistent. Still, I was a little surprised when the phone rang in less than 15 minutes. I was just getting ready to hit the People’s Pint for a quick oatmeal stout and there he was, Dr. Mark on the caller ID. He had found a source who knew the bar. It was Hector’s.

Yes, of course, it immediately rang a bell. Hector’s: that was it. I Googled it a few days later and got several hits; had been mentioned often in recent blog posts and newspaper articles about this year’s Woodstock reunion. People camped and partied there over the weekend. The full name of the place is Jerry Hector’s Last Chance Saloon. A little hole-in-the-wall watering hole that could just as easily be located in backwoods Appalachia or rural Arkansas, it is now a national landmark. I guess to me, the 16-year-old rascal who once enjoyed temporary anarchy there — well, no law but friendly order — Hector’s will always be my “first-chance” saloon. Never before had I been served at a bar. No one was carded. Call it look-the-other-way bliss; flower-power mob rule; whatever. And I have to wonder: Could it have been Mrs. Jerry Hector herself who tried to shortchange that $20 bill I gave her for a whiskey-and-ginger?

Looking back, I admit I probably should have remembered a four-mile trek to town, even a bit farther to the pond where I had swam, slept and bundled … Sixties style. But that memory’s gone. I guess if the only thing I lost at that surreal event was my ability to recall distances covered afoot, I came away unscathed. Some lost far more, are still riding a bad trip home, their sanity baked into Bethel’s red clay.

Thankfully, I weathered the storm; lived to resurrect dormant memories, albeit flawed, and tell my tale.

My recollection of Woodstock has the clarity of a sepia-tone photo exposed too long to light; dull, faded foreground washed out and bleeding into the background, key details obscured. It’s akin to piecing together a dream. You remember what woke you and little else. After all, I was only a boy, just turned 16, on a lark; no eye for architecture or interiors, foggy recall even of the musical perfomances. I guess I most remember the downpours, the crowd and a few personal peaks, anthills on a mountain.

It was mid-August 1969 in Bethel, N.Y., a hole-in-the wall hamlet south of the Catskills that could easily have been somewhere in the Appalachians or Arkansas. There, on Max Yasgur’s Farm, an iconic, “Summer of Love” music festival attracted up to a half-million flower children who rocked the nation and put a bold exclamation point on the Sixties. That I remember well, not every little detail.

The first image that always appears when I think back to “being there” is my arrival at what should have been the festival’s entryway on the other side of a town center you could have missed by blinking. I recall a bar, maybe a package store, probably a gas station and five or six small modern homes, no more, maybe less. I was walking toward the concert in a swollen current of humanity that pulled me to a gate trampled flat with the attached, eight-foot, chain-link fence erected along the festival’s perimeter. It was obviously a free concert at that point, not a soul around to take a ticket if you had one. I did. Eighteen bucks, as I recall.

Standing side by side, perhaps 20 feet from those flattened symbols of law and order, along the edge of a road, I think dirt, were two New York State Troopers wearing Smokey Bear hats, arms folded across their chests, handguns holstered on their hips. They were big men, well over six feet, and they wore a timid expression unlike any I had ever witnessed on uniformed lawmen. The smell of pot and youthful bliss was overwhelming in the hot, muggy air as the throng milled aimlessly about like people at a country fair; festive, happy, totally free and uninhibited; a yell here, a hug there, no one directing traffic or ordering people about. Positioned right there within conversation spray of the cops was a thin, pony-tailed kid wearing shorts, sandals, an untucked T-shirt and the type of straw hat you’d see at a political rally. I think they call them white skimmers. Well, on this day, at this historic event, in front of those neutered cops, what would have been a red, white and blue band reading NIXON ’68 at the Republican Convention was replaced by a crude cotton strip with “LSD $1” written in red Magic Marker, front and back, bold and brazen, cops ignoring it and the buyers. I knew then that law had been suspended, Woodstock Nation ruled, the cops just along for a rain-drenched, three-day ride that could have turned ugly had Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller sent in the National Guard as threatened on TV and radio. Some called it anarchy, others nirvana. Count me among the latter. It’s too bad cities and societies can’t be as harmonious and peaceful as the mob at that mud-splattered concert, one that changed me and the way I view the world forever; truly a difference-maker for an impressionable, rebellious, 16-year-old caught up in the movement, well aware of Vietnam protests, Chicago Seven, Eldridge Cleaver, assassinations.

My arrival at that “gate” to a kinder place is just one of the indelible images rooted deep in my memory. Another recurring scene is the one that unfolded well before Bethel while traveling the Interstate that had been closed because of the unexpected large turnout numbering in the hundreds of thousands. My Aunt Ricky, a nurse, had a dashboard medical pass that got us through the state-police roadblocks, helicopters whirling above, abandoned vehicles parked both sides of the road, three- and four-deep on the median strip. A young, tie-dyed army was marching peacefully to the festival, determined not to be deterred by authority. Some carried infants, other supplies in their backpacks, probably 10 or more miles to trudge. How could I ever forget that sight or the adrenaline rush that came with anticipation that I was about to experience something exciting and unique, surreal and historic?

We drove along slowly with that streaming pilgrimage all the way to Bethel, through a slim patch of woods, past a muddy swimming hole, and into the center of town, where my Uncle Ralph dropped us off; me, Cousin Cindy and two of her girlfriends, all a year older than me. We unloaded our supplies, lugged them past the cops and hallucinogen hawkers, and headed for Yasgur’s Farm.

It was Saturday morning and we couldn’t get closer than what seemed like a mile from stage. The crowd was immense, unlike anything I had ever experienced anywhere, even at the New York World’s Fair. We finally found a tight opening to squeeze into, laid down our blankets and coolers, and sat in awe of the spectacle. People were everywhere, music at the faraway base of the hill, rust-colored mud underfoot, strong smell of pot, cigarettes, urine and body odor spicing the wet air. Everyone seemed friendly, willing to share and chat, while others danced in another orbit, spaced out of their gourds. Yes, quite a sight for teenage eyes. I’ve seen it described as a 15- to 25-year-old crowd. I guess I was on the low end.

When the first hard rain soaked us, I became adventurous and walked to the bar in town, quite a novelty for a soon-to-be high school junior. Little did I know that would be the final time I saw my female companions. It was impossible to find them in the sea of humanity on that crowded hillside overlooking the music. I was on my own, sweet 16, traipsing with the flow, back and forth to town, to the bar, down to the swimming hole. I actually slept by that swollen pond the first night with someone kind enough to share a makeshift tent draped over a sturdy pine bough. What an adventure; wet and wild, lightning bolts dancing through black sky. I’m still proud that I held my own against more worldly guys five and 10 years older. Somehow I figured it out, found shelter from the storm; just a kid, certainly no milquetoast, hardly innocent.

I bumped into one person I recognized during my travels. His name was Robert Ferriter. He was from Conway. We passed near the flattened fence, I headed in, he out to town. Ferriter was a couple years ahead of me at Frontier. We greeted each other, shook hands, spoke for a moment about the multitude and continued in opposite directions. What a coincidence. All those people swarming around, and I found someone I knew. A miracle. You had to be there to understand.

I remember a shortage of food and drink, a serious shortage at that; way too many people to feed with the Interstate closed. Back then a six pack of Genesee Lager cost 95 cents. Not at Woodstock. Refrigerator trucks from a local distributor would pull into town throughout the day and the drivers would open the back doors and sell beer for 2 bucks a six, $8 a case; highway robbery, cash, going like hotcakes. Looking down the road from the trucks to the bar, homeowners across from the bar were selling water from outdoor spigots for 10 cents a Dixie Cup, a dollar a canteen. The lines were long; Main Street cashing in; the American way. I wonder how much those people raked in that weekend? Probably paid their mortgages.

On my first tavern stool, I ordered whiskey and ginger, kid’s stuff, and paid with a $20 bill, half a week’s pay on a tobacco farm back then. When the barmaid gave me change for a 10, I objected but she wouldn’t budge. Luckily, three dirty, denim-clad Hells Angels from New Jersey were sitting to my right. The one bumping elbows with me — bearded with long, scraggly black hair — told her it was a 20. He saw it. She didn’t argue, just went to the till, sprung the money drawer, pulled out a sawbuck and placed it on the bar in front of me; frontier justice. I offered to buy him a drink. He thanked me but declined. Since that day I have always had a soft spot for biker dudes. The guy didn’t know me from Adam but stuck up for me; had a conscience.

My first priority from the minute I arrived at Woodstock had been to see Jimi Hendrix perform, but his gig kept getting delayed. Little did I know my aunt was treating him for an overdose, heroin, I think; she working Dr. William “Rock Doc” Abruzzi’s triage tent, a busy place that weekend. Stubbornly determined to see Hendrix, I stuck around and caught the buzz circulating about him. It seemed everyone was waiting for Jimi, the Stratocaster master, and rumors were flying like gnats. Some even claimed he was dead. He wasn’t, finally appearing late, I think the final act. It was predawn Monday and the crowd had thinned, enabling close access to the stage. I wasn’t within spitting distance but not more than 100 yards away, either. It was pretty ripe down there. Fetid runoff had settled at the base of the hill behind the stage every time it rained, and the stench was awful; human and unhealthy. I heard Jimi play his defiant Star Spangled Banner and split. He was OK, not great; very disappointing. He’d had a tough night. Me, too. But I had to start thinking about getting home. I was pushing it, defiantly tardy.

When my Uncle had dropped us off, he said he’d pick us up at the same spot on Sunday at 10 a.m. I didn’t make it. Nope, nearly a day late. As I approached the designated spot around breakfast time, there he was standing by his car, searching, people passing on both sides. He had already taken the girls home and returned for me. When he spotted me, he yelled my name and warmly smiled. I was surprised. I expected rage. He was more understanding than I could have ever imagined, even seemed happy. But I still dreaded the trip home; figured it would be tense; silent and unpleasant. I was wrong. He was genuinely interested; wanted the whole rundown. Did I have a good time? Where had I been? Why hadn’t I gone to the medical tent to find my aunt? Did I remember the pick-up time? How could I stand the rainstorms, the lightning? Had I eaten anything? He was glad to see me, feared me lost. Truth is I was, in my own way. But we didn’t go there. Forbidden fruit.

A generation later, I remember sitting at my uncle’s funeral. It was at the Congregational Church in Charlemont. I was with my parents, maybe a sibling or two. During the service, my uncle’s friends — fellow teachers and coaches, skiing buddies — stood one by one to say a few words, pay tribute. I sat listening, restless to stand and tell my Woodstock tale; how I showed up a day late and he was there, seemingly unperturbed, amiable for the ride home. But I never rose from that hard wooden pew, never said a peep. There had always been family friction, none of it my doing, and honestly, I’ve never understood it, probably never will, but it silenced me; bad vibes in stifling holy air.

I do wish I had sung his praise, paid my respects. It still eats at me. I think I owed it to him. He deserved it. I resent the petty family dynamics that precluded it. Wrong, no matter how you spin it. I had no cock in that fight. I just wanted to share a poignant anecdote about a forgiving uncle who had let slide my youthful disobedience at a fascinating American event? He must have understood. Although a day late, I was years wiser. My uncle, the teacher, deserved my posthumous gratitude for being one of the few educators who ever taught me anything worth knowing.

Because of him, I was there, a young and grateful witness.

Now, I have spoken.