[luffyplayaz]

I worked in the Barclay-Vesey building during the summer of '69, and I had a 2-room apartment in the Village. My job was early techno, fiddling with video tape and film machines of all kinds. We transferred old kinescope film stock of bygone network TV shows-- mostly from the black-and-white years; Lucy, Jackie Gleason, Ed Sullivan, etc --onto this newfangled VIDEO tape that RCA had developed. It was a good job and it paid well, so I spent my days on the twentieth floor looking at the past, at television's early years (... and with a great view out the windows on New Jersey, the Statue of Liberty and the early construction of the World Trade Center ) while my like-aged brothers trudged off to Vietnam.
I worked there six years.

Once I was promoted to manager, I had to fly out to Dallas for a seminar with the people from EDS, Ross Perot's company. This happened on Woodstock weekend, and I darkly cursed the fates for laying such a cruel punishment on me. I WOULD have been at Woodstock. I just wasn't.
I spent the next week hanging out in Village bars, listening to the stories of Woodstock survivors. The Village was full of them. Walking around, I'd see dozens of "dove and guitar" t-shirts, a badge of sorts. I envied them.
Hell, my BROTHER went, and has never stopped rubbing it in. --"Nyah, I went to Woodstock. You didn't. That makes me better than you."

About two weeks later, my boss sent four of us back to Dallas to close the EDS deal. Realizing that it was the Labor Day Weekend, after everyone else on my team sealed the deal and flew back to New York for their holiday, I begged a few vacation days and stayed a week in Dallas with old friends.
We had talked about Woodstock and how close I was to it, but so far away when it happened, and they were all excited about this hastily being-put-together happening on a lake in North Dallas County where I just happened to have stumbled into--a beautiful irony-- so over Labor day 1969, I went, with my New York ways and with about ten other Dallas hippies, to The Texas International Pop Festival.

Woodstock, Texas style. Way out in the boondocks. Should be just like Woodstock. Right...

On August 30, as the weekend began, we parked our cars on a farmer's hillside and carried our tents into The Dallas International Speedway. We set up just outside the track on the shore of Lake Dallas, in full view of the stages, which were maybe 100 yards from our campsite. I was in awe of how many hippies there were in conservative Dallas. I used to live there and would have never dreamed that Big D supported such an underground population of stoners.
The place filled up, the music began at dusk, the air filled with the sweetish sour smell of good pot--and the gathering crowds had 3 days of peace and music ahead of them. I bought a poster of the event, thinking it would be a hoot to show to my co-workers.

Present under Texas skies-- and moons-- were Sly and The Family Stone, Led Zep, Janis Joplin, BB King, Santana, Canned Heat, Chicago, Sam and Dave ( among other Woodstock grads), and the sunblistered crowd covering the hillsides had now become the SECOND largest bunch to see a mega-concert--in Lewisville, Texas just two weeks after the whole concept first played out in Upstate New York.

There was the traffic jam, enormous crowds, the dust and the mud, the strange drugs and and the lack of toilets and food. There was nude swimming in the lake. And, there was the all night, non-stop Solid Gold rock and roll blasting from dozens of speaker towers. There was Janis Joplin (who was performing on her native Texas soil for the first time; the last time, too, as it turned out...) who was emoting "Bobby McGee" not fifty feet from me, and Zep's guitar riffs were so painfully loud that I was forced AWAY from the stage to a place better suited to my inner ear, and into the endless movement of a stoned-out tribe of soulmates.
At 1 AM, Sly flew like a white psychedelic bat under hypnotic strobes and a waxing Dallas moon, taking us all Higher. After that, I don't remember much...
I stayed perpetually high, crashing in my tent around 3AM.
There was no Jimi Hendrix to wake us up the next day. He was busy, out looking for ways to kill himself. The music went on. It was Chicago's day. Word had reached Dallas and thousands more were making their way here, joining the tribe. Chicago stopped playing and Canned Heat went up the country.The sun went down, the show went on.

I began thinking that this must be JUST LIKE Woodstock, maybe a 2/3rds version-- and in freakin' TEXAS!!! Hell, I even saw the spangly hippie bus belonging to Ken Keasey and his Merry Pranksters, and Wavy Gravy was there. It was like Yasgur's Farm, transplanted, only with a lot of cowboy hats. My New York ways were dissolving under the relentless sun.

End of the second day I had to go. I had a plane to catch. I left with Carlos Santana blaring "Oye Como Va" from the stage and we couldn't find our cars in the dark for an hour. The hillsides were covered in cars in all directions for miles. Ever since, whenever I lose my car, Santana pops into my brain.

Wednesday I was back at work in my skyscraper, the Texas mud washed from me. My co-workers hooted over my poster. I bought a Dallas paper at a newsstand in the Financial District and the headlines declared that the "130,000 At Music Festival" had a peaceful couple days of hippie hedonism. It was a minor article.

"200,000 or MORE At Popfest" declared the promoters in the alternative "Dallas Notes", the scumbag hippie free press. The whole wanna-be Village Voice newspaper is full of Pop Festival stories. My friend mailed me a copy after I got home, and I still have it.

Anyway, it was big, quite Woodstocky and I was there.
For 2 glorious days I lived in a tent by the lake, surrounded by thousands of Boomer- era hippies who had little but partying on their minds. Together we fouled the bushes, scrounged for food, drank warm beer, saw the best live music of our generation and shared the vibe. I made a lot of friends, even to this day. And I had NO idea that there were so many freaks in Texas.
-- We were the newest addition to the Woodstock Nation.

Two days out of Dallas and it's after work and I'm fumbling for a subway token among skyscrapers, tugging off my necktie as I take my rolled up poster to the frame shop. My sunburn is killing me.

"Texas Pop Festival, huh?" , the framer says. "Were you there? I heard that it was just like Woodstock."
The poster has hung on my various walls for 40 years.

...Forty freakin' years.