“Say Tony, would you tell me why you always wear tie-dyed white dress shirts?”
“Ah, you noticed.”
Richard thought that the brightly-colored dress shirt could hardly escape notice, but said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I wear these to protest white-collar greed, which consumes the days and nights of the people in this country.”
“Yes, but if it weren’t for the profit motive, we wouldn’t have a . . .”
“By the way, do you know what day this is?” interrupted Tony.
“No, I can’t say that I do. Is it your birthday?”
“It’s kind of a birthday, but not mine. It was 30 years ago today, on August 15, 1969, that we met near Woodstock, New York—three hundred thousand of us!”
“So you were at the Woodstock Music Festival! I’ve read about that.” Richard was obviously impressed to know someone who was part of such an historic event. “You say, three hundred thousand hippies!”
“Well, no. We weren’t all hippies. There were students, too, and those who opposed the war in Vietnam among us. But, it was like one big love-in, man. Woodstock was a gathering of many types of people who put out good vibrations, ‘cause they had it together, unlike the older generations.”
“Had what ‘together’?”
“Man, I’ve got to go through all this with you sometime—so you know where I’m comin’ from. For now, just follow along as best you can, Richard.” Tony closed his eyes. “I can still see the huge field, all of us standin’ as far as the eye can see, mostly people your age, packed tight before a long platform. I was, I don’t know, ‘bout a hundred feet from the front of the platform. We were crowded together with so much love—I mean nobody shoved you. People you didn’t know put their arms around you. Sometimes the crowd would surge forward in anticipation of the next band, like when the Grateful Dead came on. But the crowd’s movement really worried the cops,” said Tony, a sneer in his voice.
“Cops?” queried Richard.
“Oh yeah, well, there was a bunch of cops all around, ‘cause the people in the towns close by thought we were goin’ to riot or somethin’ and so they sent all these cops to watch us. They didn’t trust us ‘cause of the establishment’s propaganda. They should’ve believed how the event was advertised: ‘Three Days of Peace, Love, and Music’—I still have one of the original posters. But they figured they had somethin’ to fear. And they did, but not what they thought.”
“What did they have to fear?”
“That we had the power to turn the world around—through the power of love,” said Tony with a look of mixed confidence and sadness. “You know, Richard, all those people comin’ together didn’t make any trouble, even when it started to rain and the food and water ran out. I can still remember the smell of wet grass and flowers in my girlfriend’s hair.”
“How come the food and water ran out? Didn’t the promoters prepare well?”
“I suppose they didn’t expect so many of us to show up. I have to tell you, the music was outta sight! It stirred the soul, man! Folk. Rock. I was one lucky cat to experience Woodstock. For years afterward, we called ourselves ‘Woodstock Nation’.”
“It sure must have been an interesting time to be alive. I wish I could go back in time and see it for myself,” Richard remarked, more to himself than to Tony.
“I wish you could, man. I wish we both could. It was groovy. We celebrated life.” As Tony said these words, he slapped Richard gently on the shoulder. “In those days, we wanted to be self-sufficient, independent of the establishment—findin’ identity and direction within ourselves, and not from the discordant voices of authority.”
As Richard drove home at the end of the shift, he pondered the conversation with Tony and asked himself if anyone can ever be completely independent of social institutions. He wondered if Tony had been one of the thousands of hippies who’d relied on government food stamps to eat.
10
Prelude to Crisis
The bright, warm days of summer were fading into fall with cooler nights and the smell of wood smoke in the air. The cannery responded to signs of the new season with slower production and reduced hours for workers such as Richard. The resulting freedom meant that Richard could once again plan weekend activities with Mac and others, including his new friend Tony. Richard found Tony’s descriptions of the hippie era fascinating. Although it became increasingly apparent to Richard that Tony, to a great extent, lived in the past. Once when Richard hinted at this in a conversation, Tony replied, “Well, everything groovy happened twenty-five years ago.” When Tony spoke of the protest marches, university sit-ins, draft-card burnings, speeches against the Vietnam War, and the music of the period, he conjured up vivid images that made those times live again for Richard. As their work at the cannery came to an end, both men expressed their desire to maintain their friendship.
The third-night after his cannery job ended, Richard thought, “I feel like I should be getting ready for work.” Weeks of that routine had been ingrained into his system. Though it hadn’t taken long to adjust to the graveyard shift, he wondered how long it would take his circadian rhythms to re-adjust.
Alone in the living room, he relaxed in a comfortable, old rocking chair. From a nearby table, he took a novel he had started and soon became engrossed. He had just reached a point where the hero confronted his nemesis when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“What! Oh, Uncle Mac! I didn’t hear you come up behind me.”
“I’m sorry laddie, I dinna mean to startle ye. But I wanted to let ye know. I have your family’s photo album I’d been searchin’ for. It has pictures o’ your mither and father and your brother and sister. I thought ye might have time now to look at it.”
“Sure.”
The two men sat down on the sofa, and Mac put the album on Richard’s lap. As Richard turned the pages, Mac commented, sometimes saying where and when a photograph was taken.
“I certainly had a nice looking family,” said Richard sadly. Pointing at one photo, he declared, “I like this shot of the whole family. It looks like I’m included too, because my mother is expecting. Wait a minute though—that couldn’t be, my brother and sister are too young.” Richard looked at his uncle for an explanation.
“You’re right, o’ course, laddie. At the time this photo was taken, your mom was carryin’ her third child. In this photo, I think . . . she’s aboot seven months along. If it turned out to be a boy, she planned to name him Douglas. I canna tell ye what went wrong, but your brother was stillborn. I’m sorry to have to tell ye, but ye should know. We should always remember Douglas.”
“You know, Douglas and I have something in common—we both never knew our parents or brother and sister.”
“I was thinkin’ aboot him just last night. Ye see, my boy, if Douglas had lived, tomorrow would be his birthday; he’d be 39 years old.”
Richard and his uncle looked at, and talked about, family members in the album until past midnight. Richard concentrated hard on the faces of his relatives, imprinting them in his mind in an effort to see them as a family that would have loved him, rather than as strangers who didn’t know him. He wondered how they would view God’s purpose for his life.
“Over the years, I’ve seen how the things you do, Uncle Mac, always come back to the purpose God has given you for your life. I wish I knew God’s purpose for my life. The only purpose in my life has been my physical survival, and that of the people I love.”
“Stay close to the Lord, laddie, and He will show ye, in His gude time, how your life can