Woodstock

787

It was the summer of ’69.

 

A triple drabble, written for the LJ me_and_thee_100 comm, challenge 69.

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It was the summer of ’69.

Hutch and me, we talked about going. It was all talk, of course. Neither one of us could really afford to take the trip. We were rookies at the time, at the bottom of the pay scale, and it was a good bet that we wouldn’t have gotten the time off, anyway. Not to mention, he was still married. No way was Van going to some hippie concert in New York, much less let Hutch off his leash long enough for him to go. Never woulda happened.

We saw the film together. Wasn’t the same as being there, naturally, but it was great. Three hours of incredible music, without the drugged-up crowds, overflowing outhouses, and nasty weather. But when Hendrix came on at the end…. I don’t have the words to describe it, hearing “The Star-Spangled Banner” played that way for the first time. By the end, I had a hold of Hutch’s hand and was squeezing it pretty hard. I didn’t even realize it until he squeezed back. That alone would have been worth the rain and the mud, just to have heard that live.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, as it turned out. A year after the festival, Jimi was dead.

Hutch bought me the album when we became partners. Man, I put a lot of mileage on those LPs back then.

I still play it once in a while—on CD now; I have the vinyl, but no record player anymore—and think about that summer.

Hendrix. Joplin. Moon. All gone too soon. The list grows longer every year.

But Dave Crosby and Joe Cocker, they’re still around. CCR is gone, but John Fogarty isn’t. Joan Baez and Santana are still going strong.

And Hutch still lets me hold his hand.