Woodstock

On this day in 1969, in a field on a dairy farm in upstate New York, more than a half-million people gathered for three days of peace, love and music.

It was the largest gathering of its kind, closing down the New York thruway. It was the touchpoint of a generation. It was the best we could be.

There was a war going on, there was social foment in the streets, there was racial inequality. And, there was the music. Back then, it always came back to the music.

It was relevant, important, the rhythm of our hearts, souls.

We all couldn't make it to Woodstock, of course, although if today you asked the surviving hippies if they were there, you'd probably get an answer that would have pegged attendance at the festival at more than 3 million.

Woodstock was news. Big news.

Mainstream media was curious about the hippies back then, but they were not terribly objective in their reporting when it came to the dope-smoking counterculture. They couldn't see beyond their myopic focus, looking for everything wrong with the young people of that time instead
 of looking for the good. And, there was a lot of good coming from people with nothing but peace and love in their hearts.

Honestly, there were some things that went wrong. Too many tuned way too far out, never to return. Too many were too young and naive to handle the world they stepped into, whether wittingly or unwittingly. They were unprepared for freedom and all that goes along with it and, yeah, a lot of bad decisions were made by kids who simply didn't know any better. And all that free love everybody talks about? At an age far too young, too many found out that love is anything but free and that there are emotions that can be difficult to wrap their young minds around.

But, there was also an attitude back then that inspired us to look after each other. Why? Because nobody else would. Many of us were estranged from our parents, our families, our friends because of the way we looked, the music we listened to, our attitudes.

We were often referred to as "free spirits," but we were anything but free. We had a draft hanging over our heads and the war was going badly. It would eventually take more than 50,000 U.S. souls.

The hippies tried to engage a world that was turning corporate. They tried to understand why their long hair got them thrown out of restaurants, even Disneyland, which was very hippie unfriendly at the time.

In later days, the hippies were ridiculed, reviled, looked upon as a do-nothing generation. But, stop a minute and remember how it used to be.

Think of the strides that have been made to preserve our ecology. Think about how Ozzie and Harriet lived back then and how Ozzie and Sharon live today. Not that they are the epitome of relationship stability, they are a reflection of a certain equality that was unknown back then.

Think of how we have struggled so hard for racial equality. There's a similar fight going on now, only it involves different races and religions and people with alternative sexual lifestyles.

Think about how we banded together, took to the streets as one to exercise our rights of free speech to end a war and right the wrongs of a government gone crazy. OK, so it's still crazy, but we really have had nobody pick up the mantle we cast down as we aged not-so-gracefully in some ways.

Forty-two years ago? That was a long time ago -- a very long time ago -- and time may have dulled our senses or embellished our memories. I mean, I'm not sure if we accomplished little or a lot.

But, it was our time.