by Bob Spitz
Goldstein’s approach was direct and uncompromising. “I don’t want any hero-fuckers to make the trip,” he told Romney, his wife Bonnie Jean, and a few family members who sat in on the meeting. “It’s gonna be tough enough without the usual bunch of groupies. Your gang is going to have to set an example every step along the way—not only during the festival, but also in the course of our preparations. It’s not going to be glamorous. If you have any designs about hanging around the stage or making the scene with the production staff, well, stay here.”
They discussed the Hog Farm’s taking over the administration of the festival campgrounds, which Goldstein wanted to relinquish so that he might devote more time to looking for water. He believed that their years of experience living under the stars and knowing how to set up and maintain makeshift living quarters could very well be the cornerstone for cultivating campgrounds. Romney insisted that their role be more meaningful than building trails and chopping wood. Once that was out of the way, they didn’t want to sit around on their haunches for six weeks until they were paid.
“How about the free kitchen you hit us with in New York? Was that on the level?”
“Sure. In fact, it’s already been worked into the security and provision plan. All we’ll need from your people is a budget—what you think the food and utensils for cooking are going to cost us.”
“We’re gonna have to get your approval on everything we do?”
“No. Look, you’re making this tougher than it’s gotta be. You’ve only got to give me a rough estimate of what you’ll need so I can free the bread. Once I get the okay on the overall budget, one of your people is going to have to take responsibility for purchasing all the supplies. We wouldn’t know our ass from a hole in the ground as far as that stuffs concerned, and, frankly, we don’t have the time.”
As for the staff, Stanley asked they gather a crew of eighty-five of their people to make the trip. Since only fifteen Hog Farmers actually lived together, Romney and Bonnie Jean agreed to tap the circle of existing communes in the New Mexico area. They had already established good relationships with the Juke Savages and the Buffalo Commune, and with a little persuasion, they assured Goldstein that they could complete the conscription in time.
“We need a dozen of your strongest men right away,” Goldstein said. There was still a lot of heavy labor to be done. “If you can send them east in the Road Hog [the Hog Farm’s bus], we’ll see they’re handsomely paid for their services.”
“How about the rest of the people we get together? How do you expect us to get them to New York without wheels?”
“By plane. Look, we weren’t kidding about sending a plane for you. We’ve already made some tentative arrangements with American Airlines to charter one of their smaller jets to bring you out.” He opened his briefcase and showed them pieces of correspondence with American’s charter division. They were visibly impressed by Goldstein’s handiwork. “As soon as you can let me know when the staffing arrangements have been completed, I’ll arrange for a plane to pick you up in Albequerque.”
It was the “most idiotic scheme” the Hog Farm had ever heard of, but somehow Romney trusted Goldstein enough to pledge their total support. Bonnie Jean was appointed Goldstein’s liaison. She would walk two miles to the closest phone each afternoon at two o’clock and call him, using one of several bogus credit cards the Hog Farm had picked up along the way, to fill him in on her progress.
The only thing left for them to discuss before the business could be adjourned was compensation. Stanley had promised them that, in addition to picking up all of their expenses, Woodstock Ventures was prepared to pay them a decent wage for their time spent on festival business. Romney, however, insisted on a lump-sum minimum guarantee in the area of twenty thousand dollars. Their bus was in bad shape, he said, and they’d have to buy another one soon; it would take practically as much as twenty grand to get one in decent condition. Anyhow, as long as a lot of money was going to be made by the promoters, he felt no remorse about asking for so much. No one was particularly choked up about making some twenty-year-old hippie from Miami a millionaire. Goldstein thought that twenty thousand dollars was too high, and said so. They could have what was left of the food and all the heavy cooking utensils, but they’d have to lower their fee considerably for him to make such a deal. After an hour of honest bartering, it was agreed that the Hog Farm, in return for being the Woodstock festival’s special task force, would receive one-way transportation by chartered jet to New York, food and lodging for as long as they were employed by Woodstock Ventures, an hourly wage for the men who worked in the field, all edible leftovers, all cookware, and fifteen thousand dollars in cash. They had Goldstein over a barrel, but he knew the festival desperately needed their assistance and therefore accepted the terms. If they actually accomplished as much as he thought they would, fifteen thousand dollars would be a bargain.
• • •
Jim Grant was not even remotely as satisfied as Goldstein had been. Grant’s evaluation of the trip, sent to Wes Pomeroy in a letter dated June 23, 1969, was predicated on a previous personal respect for the Hog Farm’s orderliness that had come undone by this visit to their camp. He had devoted much of his time in Aspen Meadows to making an inspection of the site in relation to the extent of the commune’s management of it. According to the New Mexico bureaucrat’s impression, “the entire affair appeared to be completely without organization or management.” He was particularly repulsed by the seemingly nonexistent hygienic conditions. “The only sanitation facilities observed,” Grant reported, “consisted of a garbage disposal pit being dug some ten feet from the well and the cooking area. . . . We arrived at the campground during the dinner hour and found different groups preparing their dinners over open fires under what seemed to be quite unsanitary conditions.”
Pomeroy was not really that interested in the Hog Farm’s health habits; Lawrence and Goldstein were capable of handling sanitation on their own. He was, however, expressly dismayed over Grant’s evaluation of their muddled organization. “There were no means for crowd control in the event it became necessary,” Grant continued. “There was no attempt to provide information services. There was no traffic direction or control. There was a certain amount of mammarial exposure [which, according to Goldstein’s account, was a gross understatement: “I never saw so many bare tits flaunted so casually before.”]. It may be that when these people do their ‘thing’ for themselves,” he concluded, “the circumstances are completely different than when they stage a production strictly for profit.”
Pomeroy was now forced to reexamine his security arrangement and, perhaps, restructure it to exclude much of the Hog Farm’s predominance. After an intense study of his working plan, during which time he consulted frequently with Goldstein, Lawrence, and Ganoung about their corresponding divisions, Pomeroy settled on relying on his basic working plan, however padding the Hog Farm’s participation in it with the services of experienced professionals.
Pomeroy’s first alteration had to do with maintaining channels of communication between Security Command and all other areas on and around the site throughout the three-day event. Originally, some method of interaction utilizing members of the Hog Farm as messengers was to be worked out, but Pomeroy could no longer count on their soundness to carry it off. Don Ganoung had done some preliminary scouting around the county and stumbled upon a group of ham radio operators whom he recommended to the head of security. The Tri-County Citizens Band Radio Club, a seventy-five-member organization, was interested in hearing what Pomeroy would offer them, and Ganoung set up a meeting between the two parties at the group’s headquarters in Middletown on June 28.
Eleven of the club’s members showed up for the meeting, all of whom voiced considerable interest in participating in the Aquarian Exposition. The festival, as they saw it, presented them with a real challenge and, as Tri-Co’s president, Arnold Puff, confided to several assoc
iates who were radio equipment dealers, “I think we can sell these guys a few walkie-talkies in the process.”
Their function, as Pomeroy described it, would be manifold as the weekend progressed. At this time, he and his staff had outlined several responsibilities that had materialized from hours of discussions and included manning posts inside the festival area, reporting to a Command Central any and all difficulties on the site, handling communications with the bus dispatcher in charge of routing transportation between the parking lots and the gates, dispatching buses when necessary, patroling the perimeter of the site and calling for assistance when and if they found spectators camping on lawn owned by residents. Tri-Co would, in his estimation, be the sole force that connected security to all outlying areas of the festival and was highly regarded in his formula for success.
As Pomeroy prepared to leave so the men could resume their normal business meeting. Arnold Puff raised a possible conflict of interest that might prohibit his men from taking part in the festival security plans. The club, it seemed, had scheduled a jamboree for the same weekend as Woodstock. Its purpose was to raise financing for a much-needed clubhouse and could not, at this point, very well be put off. He expressed a desire, and, of course, he spoke on behalf of the entire membership, for Woodstock Ventures to make it worthwhile for Tri-Co to cancel their event so they could fulfill an obligation to the festival instead.
“How much do you expect to clear from this jamboree?” Pomeroy asked suspiciously. If experience was any indication of what was about to happen, they were going to hit him with an astronomical figure with which he would have to comply.
“All told, about two hundred dollars,” the president replied.
Pomeroy tried not to disclose his utter relief, but had to laugh. “Oh, I think we could see our way clear to cover you for that. If your members vote to support our function, we’ll see you receive a comparable amount.”
Nothing more had to be said. Pomeroy grabbed his sport coat and headed for the front door before anyone had a chance to interpret his laugh as a lease on life. He headed straight for his hotel room where, for the next few days, he revised the pile of false starts that had been made of the security budget. He itemized the costs he thought they’d incur with Tri-Co’s field stint, tacked on a round figure to include John Fabbri and Joe Kimble’s fees and computed his own expenses on the basis of an estimate taken over the past few weeks since he moved to Wallkill. When he finished, the security budget, so far, was a three-page balance sheet with an accurate accounting of his divisional costs. The only element lacking was security.
• • •
In 1969, the New York City Police Department was still viewed as an exceptional organization of courageous men dedicated to preserving and defending the law in a greatly troubled city. The hippies, of course, looked upon them as a savage bunch of rednecks with a license to harass them, but for the most part the unit of 28,000 officers was reviewed quite warmly by the average Joe. It was said that there was no more honorable identification card in all New York City than the glint of a silver-plated shield with the forceful letters NYPD embossed across the top. This was before the commission headed by Wall Street lawyer Whitman Knapp moved in in 1971 to weed out a widespread virus of corruption that had been infecting the force for longer than anyone cared to remember. And Woodstock Ventures wanted that uplifting group of men on their side of the turnstiles—even if it meant allying themselves with their cultural foes. Some things, as Michael Lang knew well, could not be avoided if the festival was to succeed.
Wes Pomeroy was also depending on their assistance to supplement his principle of self-regulation. He had initially spoken to Chief Inspector George P. McManus, who sat at the helm of the city’s patrolmen, about recruiting off-duty security personnel from within the department. For all his efforts, though, Pomeroy had never been able to extract a clear-cut statement of policy from McManus and, thus, turned that responsibility over to John Fabbri, hoping for better results. Fabbri and McManus knew each other from various police conferences attended over the years and had established a respect for one another’s methods of law enforcement. When Fabbri arrived in Wallkill the last week in June, he placed a call to McManus and, in one conversation, managed to elicit a promise of cooperation from the department. McManus suggested that they notify the captains of the city’s individual precincts about the festival, have them put some kind of circular spelling out the assignment on their bulletin boards and refer them to his office for approval.
Pomeroy, Ganoung, and Fabbri spent several hours discussing and drawing up the announcement calling for extracurricular police assistance that would be posted in every Manhattan station house the first week in July. Originally, they had gone in the direction of a clever ad designed to catch the eye; that was soon abandoned as sounding too much like a television commercial for a new detergent. Pomeroy wanted something more reserved and less polished, something that would enable him to put forth the job description and still have built-in devices that would discourage cops not suited for the position. After much deliberation and several revisions, they settled on the straightforward approach:
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair seeks to employ many New York City patrolmen who will be available from August 14 to August 17 inclusive (preferably on vacation), to act as guides, ushers, and monitors during this weekend festival.
Salary—$50 per eight-hour day. Overtime at $6.25 per hour.
Food and lodgings will be provided at resort facilities. Transportation and clothing furnished. No law enforcement duties.
Interested parties were directed to pick up an application from Woodstock Ventures at the downtown production office, or to see their duly appointed representative in the precinct.
The applicants, as everyone connected with the festival knew, were going to have to be carefully screened. If, during an interview, a patrolman gave any indication of a personal prejudice toward hippies or the desire to use force in any manner whatsoever, he would be swiftly eliminated. A cop would also be judged on his facial expressions; if he habitually snarled when he talked, if he gave the slightest impression that he had something to prove or displayed a macho attitude, his application would be dropped into the dead-letter file. Even the secretary at the desk who accepted the applications was brought into the screening process. She noted how the cops came dressed to the production office, how they reacted to seeing incense burning in the ashtrays and psychedelic posters on the walls, the manner in which they confronted the attractive, braless secretaries. These telling traits, as Pomeroy had rightly calculated, were the first step in sifting out strict enforcers, hippie haters, and those with an obvious chip on their shoulder. There would be similar levels of questioning at a later date until the stack of applicants dwindled to between 300 and 350 men. Those who made the cut would probably be hired and eventually become members of the Peace Service Corps.
Before he could begin step two of security screening—a process that included hours of intensive psychological grilling of the candidates—Pomeroy had to recruit his own command force from among the available experts in the field. “A tight cell” was how he liked to refer to this unit, with the equivalent ranks of “sergeants” and “captains” who would report to him at the festival and would interview and ultimately select all personnel. Ganoung, Fabbri, and Joe Kimble were automatically placed in the cell and made commanders, the highest grade. Ganoung and Fabbri already knew the staff and procedures (and had developed relationships with many of the local residents), and Kimble would arrive in time for an intensive orientation that Pomeroy himself would conduct. The way he laid it out on the topographical map, he needed someone to direct “inner security” and someone to direct “outer security,” mobilizing the nonuniformed force in each of those areas. The third commander would be assigned a functional duty, such as “transportation/ parking.” Pomeroy considered the last to be the most critical responsibility because of “the almost imposs
ibly inadequate road access to the site.” Whoever assumed that role could not allow the roads to become bottled up with traffic; otherwise, they’d have a certified disaster on their hands.
Pomeroy’s first choice to join the expanded security force was his old friend Jewell Ross, a retired Berkeley Police Department captain with whom he had worked on numerous occasions. Pomeroy wanted Ross for his wisdom and intelligence, which the old man expertly applied to his methods of officiating. An even-tempered Irishman with a thick, tuneful brogue, Ross had directed fourteen conferences on civil disorder for the Department of Justice in 1968, all of which emphasized the human element involved and urged policemen to respond to distress with compassion. This was the type of educated philosophy that Pomeroy wanted carried over to his own “Indians” (as he called the off-duty cops) in their dealings with the young crowd. Ross consented to join the staff. He’d arrive a few days before the festival and leave the moment it was over. For a consultant’s fee of $150 a day plus expenses and accommodations, he became the newest and most experienced of the cell.
Pomeroy wanted the third position filled from within the NYPD to afford him easy access to McManus and Police Commissioner Howard Leary. A high-placed New York City cop’s presence would also exercise a certain amount of influence over the “Indians” insofar as, once they returned to their ordinary jobs in the city, they would be required to salute and answer to him. Someone recommended he hire Deputy Inspector Joe Fink whose turf was Greenwich Village and who frequented hippie hangouts there such as the Fillmore, the Electric Circus, and the Cafe Au Go Go. It was not until much later, after Fink joined the cell, that several of the festival staff members admitted having dealt with Fink in unofficial rendezvous. Those who had been associated with the East Village music scene claimed Joe Fink was the police official who somehow ensured that busts would not be made in their establishments. A popular story was that Circus owner Jerry Brandt made him wear a pig mask when he entered the club. Pomeroy, however, was unaware of Fink’s alleged participation in these matters and welcomed him aboard. Fink was to be compensated for his services at the rate of $12.50 an hour (a considerable supplement to his NYPD salary) and the fiat fee of $100 a day while on duty at the festival site. Pomeroy suggested that Fink hire himself an assistant for the three-day ordeal and he, in turn, commissioned Ralph Cohen, captain of Manhattan’s ninetieth precinct, for that position.
