Photo by Elliot Landy
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Woodstock Envy
By Mollie Fermaglich, March-April 2003
Okay, so I wasn’t there. But at least now I’m willing to admit it
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I was 16 in 1969, a senior in high school, and if there was anyone cooler in my class, well, you could have fooled me. Donning only peasant shirts and granny dresses with my authentic Dutch clogs and the gray poncho I never took off, I eschewed those friends who wore penny loafers and plaids, whose pea coats were bought at department stores instead of a bona fide, dust-infested, clothes-stacked-to-the-ceiling army-and-navy store. If you so much as owned a pair of pleated khakis or a Lacoste shirt, you were no friend of mine. And nothing separated the men from the boys back then as did taste in music. Friends who swooned for the Monkees, the Archies, or (vomit bag, please) Bobby Goldsboro were permanently banished from my kingdom.
So, I was cool. Didn't go to my senior prom or any after-school activity even remotely smacking of school spirit. Played guitar—war protest and Joni Mitchell songs were my entire repertoire. Burned incense, owned black lights, even went on peace marches (though I now confess it was probably less about ending the war and more about meeting cute guys who'd managed to escape the draft). But, in the end, I know now what I knew more than 30 years ago. I will never achieve total cool-ocity in my lifetime—I didn't go to Woodstock.
How could this have happened? To me? I've racked my brain for years and still can't come up with any sort of answer that might alleviate the guilt, the pain, the what-if. How could I have not known, from the very beginning, that this would be the concert of the century?
I was a camp waitress that summer, in a place where Birkenstocked, Leonard Cohen-loving, black-clad, bead-wearing New York social workers sent their kids. By the time I'd unpacked my duffle bag, I knew I had to go to Woodstock. Only two things stood in my way: Tickets were sold out, and two of my fellow waiters—Gary and Nina, who were nauseatingly in love—had tickets and had already requested those days off. Damn! How could they? They weren't even real hippies—for God's sake, they were from the suburbs.
By July, man had walked on the moon and I still didn't have Woodstock tickets. I tried to convince myself that this moon thing was a much bigger deal than some dumb old concert, and perhaps it was—for Neil Armstrong. At 16, I couldn't really appreciate a small step or giant leap for anyone. All I could think about was Hendrix and Havens.
Gary and Nina went and returned, and for the rest of the summer I was taunted by their new mantra: "Woodstock, man. It was all about being there." My mild distaste for this couple rapidly grew into a hatred so deep that if there is a hell, I still wish that they wind up there. I mean the hell that is a dinner theater where they are eternally condemned to a revolving lineup of Buddy Hackett, Steve-and-Edie, and Julie Budd.
I entered college that fall hoping everyone would be too busy complaining about the size of their dorm rooms and the meal plan to remember Woodstock. Anytime it came up, I would try to deflect: "Do you think Paul is really dead?" But nothing I could say would ever drown out, "Hendrix. Sunrise. 'Star-Spangled Banner'—what a trip!" I could not bring myself to see the movie Woodstock, nor could I buy the album. To this day, whenever I hear the concert's unofficial anthem, all I hear is: "By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong, but nowhere in the throng was Mollie Fer-maaay-glich." I suffered from an inferiority complex that led to repeated efforts to prove to everyone on campus that I was still worthy. This, in turn, led to my massive consumption of recreational drugs and a vow never to miss what could turn out to be the next Woodstock. I therefore spent too many hours and too much money going to every concert within a 50-mile radius of campus. Still, I could not win in the bragging-rights department.
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