Name: Cliff Wicker
City/State: Hamilton, Va.
Date: Wed Oct 29 2003
Wrote...
What a trip! From beginning to end. A friend and myself hitch hiked from Alexandria, VA to the festival. It took only 2 rides. One in a dump truck from Alex-15 miles to Springfield. The next ride waas a couple of other freaks from NY in a63-64 vw microbus W/ragtop sunroof. The sign on the bus was Macon or Bust.We left Alexandria with about a buck and half between us, and we were "on the bus". We lived like kings the whole trip. Hired on at the festival for set up crew and had everything that we could possibly want. Hard work and hard play.

The festival music was great and so are the memories. Some of the best music there was at a free stage back in the woods. Where else could you see Duane Allman, Johnny Winter, Alvin Lee on stage jamming at one time! It was all about the music the place and time, brotherhood of man, peace, love and drugs, taking care of one another..............Boy The times they have a-changed.

Yep we all growed up real good. Things are much better now that we are they. I tried to expose my children to a piece of that place in time but was unable to find it. What a drag! Took them to a 3day festival last summer hoping that they too could have a best of times. Things have changed. It's no longer about anything but the money, the performers and music are stictly incidental, although I did get to see my teenagers react to an anything goes open air, marketing blitz of the usual festival hats, shirts, $3 cokes and waters, $5 pizza slice's and hot dogs, cd's, dvd's, but the music really didn't distract us from the important stuff.

I asked my kids what they thought about the festival. They looked at each other and kinda smiled at each other and then said "well it's kinda scary", we saw one guy get run over by one of thos port-a-potty trucks and everyone just walked on by him..........

I guess I never remember being worried or scared back then it seemed like we were all taking care of each other instead of ourselves.