Dear Friends and Family,

Prompted by the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, I’ve been writing a short story based on what I could remember Kenneth said about the time when he hitchhiked to the iconic music fest in August 1969. He had graduated from high school in June 1968 and was trying to put himself through his first year of college by working three construction jobs in the mountain communities of Sylva, Cashiers, and Cullowhee. He couldn’t keep up his grades and was terrified that his draft number for Vietnam would come up. He had no money, no car that didn’t need a high hill to start coasting from—he didn’t even know how to take a bus—and had never been away from his home state.

I did not remember him showing me any photo from that time, but I went back through his old photos and found that there was, indeed, one that showed him at Woodstock with friends—and the sea of hundreds of thousands of concertgoers in the photo’s background. His grandmother had also kept newspaper clippings of the music fest because she knew he was up there and his grandparents worried about him.

It is startling to look back at a music fest unlike any other, before or since, with nearly a half million young people, that included a biblical rainstorm and a huge field of mud, as well as some of the greatest musical performances of the era—and no violence. Somehow they all got along in peace, freedom and love—words that are, today, difficult to hear without irony. There were only two “security” officers for the entire site, from the Hog Farm commune who called themselves “please” officers. There were also drugs—mostly pot and LSD—that would, sooner or later, give way to even worse drugs and doom the dreams of many erstwhile hippies and veterans of that time.

We still have the belt buckle that Kenneth is wearing in the photo at Woodstock. For that matter, we may still have the pair of jeans he was wearing—always calling them “dungarees”— unless they’re out in the sheet composting ravine here at Blue Note Garden, where I’m letting a lot of his oldest pairs of boots and clothes work their way back into the earth. He did not like to part with anything, no matter how ragged. I’d guess that it’s a loaf of bread in front of him, along with a pack of cigarettes, and that he is slathering peanut butter on a slice—always one of his favorite meals. (When family and friends first view this photo they immediately assume he is checking his phone. Not hardly in 1969, but he certainly had the characteristic gesture down early.)

It is sad to think I probably cannot find anyone from those days who could identify the two friends in the photo with him. I don’t know whether they went with him to the festival, or he met them there. Most of Kenneth’s friends from his graduating class are long gone. There is only one left that I know of who went all the way through school with him, beginning in kindergarten but not going on to college. Kenneth’s brothers don’t seem to have existed in the same world with him.

If any of you remember any detail that Kenneth may have shared with you about Woodstock, I will be grateful if you will let me know.

Theresa