On the first of “four days of peace, love and music,” we packed ourselves into a Dodge Dart and drove from New Paltz to Bethel. OK, somewhere NEAR Bethel -- we got to within nine miles of the festival. After an immobile hour or two, my Dart-borne companions were ready to turn back.

Not about to miss this historical event, I climbed out, hoisted a sleeping bag onto my shoulder, and started walking past the endless line of stopped cars. After walking FOREVER in the August heat -- when I was perhaps half-way to the festival site -- heaven smiled on this weary traveler. It began to rain -- no mere sprinkle, but a hippie-soaking downpour.

Imagine the scene: thousands upon thousands of wet, tired, hippies (many with wet tired dogs) along a twenty-mile long parking lot. Somewhere in the middle of this fragrant jamboree, a tall skinny guy, wearing white bell-bottoms, a shiny magenta rayon shirt (with puffy sleeves—good lord, what was I thinking?), trudged along, somewhat stooped under the weight of a water-logged sleeping bag.

Did that pony-tailed guy give up? No freakin’ way!

Not then, at least -- the next morning was a different story.

I had spent the night cuddling up against someone I should NEVER have been with, in that very wet sleeping bag. Did I mention that it was lined with some cheesy yellow-dyed flannel -- and that, at the first sign of moisture, it released that yellow dye all over the enclosed hippies? Did I mention that the sleeping bag was, itself, half submerged in the re-hydrated fecal matter of generations of Max Yasgur’s dairy cows?

Enough was enough. I shuffled back down that same highway, and -- when I reached some traffic that was moving -- hitched a ride to New Paltz.

The white bell-bottoms, stained by god-knows-what-all was living in the mud of peace, love and music, were never white again. No amount of bleach was to have any effect on them. I had to dye them a nearly fluorescent shade of magenta.

What can I say—It was 1969, and it seemed like a good thing to do at the time.