Back to the Garden

Fifty-three years ago, back in 1969 this starry-eyed, (ok, maybe not starry-eyed), teenager left her parent's home in Highland, Maryland looking for three days of love, peace, and music in the rolling farmlands south of Woodstock, New York. As Joni Michell wrote:

By the time I got to Woodstock

They were half a million strong

Everywhere there were songs

And celebration

We are stardust, we are golden

And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden

Kathy will be the first to tell you, she didn't find that love and peace on Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, but three thousand miles away, on the beach in Oregon.

On Tuesday we came down to waffles with whipped-cream and strawberries, prepared by Nancy, the owner of The Queen B&B where we spent the night. If you ever find yourself in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, you can't do better.

We were back in the Subaru by 9:30, heading for the Poconos on the interstate. Just before the town of Stroudsburg we stopped for gas and a Chick-fil-A lunch (sorry, no picture). Our destination for the day was a dinner with Ted Ojarovski and his wife Lynn in West Shokan, New York. Kathy and I both worked with Ted at the Maranatha Evangelical Association from 1975 to 1979, and then at The Word for Today from 1979 until 1982. As we ate lunch, I texted Ted our expected arrival time, and he mentioned that the original Woodstock site was right on the way. Kathy couldn't resist so we changed our itinerary.

In Maryland and Pennsylvania we got to drive through the back-woods of the Alleghenies. Now Google routed us off the freeway for a tour of the rural Poconos. When we got to Bethel, we found that Max Yasgur's farm had been transformed into the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts with a museum featuring the "Story of the '60s and Woodstock". It's a little strange to think of yourself as a museum exhibit.

We just wanted to see the original site and get a picture. There were only a few people there. One of them was Lonnie, who was a 21-year-old returning Vietnam Vet, working for Max Yasgur in the summer of 1969. He and Kathy swapped stories for a while, and then we were on our way to Kingston.

Again, we were routed along small back roads with 30 mph speed limits. I was looking for a speed trap, so I tried to keep my foot off the accelerator. This time we got to see the Catskills. 

The winding road took us along Peekamoose Road through the Sundown Wild Forest. The entire area is a tow-away zone and the forest service has embedded poles along the road so that people don't just pull over willy-nilly and make the road impassible. Because we were on a schedule we didn't stop though. 

We finally got to Ted's house around 4:30. We got to meet his wife Lynn and we spent some time reminiscing at their beautiful house. 

Ted had made dinner reservations in Kingston at the Hoffman House, first opened in 1711, for 6:45. Lynn mentioned that Kingston was the original capital of New York. 

After stopping by our hotel to pick up the keys, we had a wonderful dinner, sharing everything that had happened in the last forty years on our respective coasts. It was so wonderful to see Ted again and to finally meet his beautiful bride.