by Bob Spitz
Joseph Owen, the acting town attorney, had been chosen to preside over the hearing. Dressed in a severe dark suit, his perfectly knotted tie in place, Owen made his way to the center of the speaker’s podium where he nodded to the zoning board’s secretary, Herbert Freer, who read the Notice of Public Hearing with great deliberation.
Sam Eager then delivered a brief, unemotional preliminary statement summarizing his clients’ activities since they took possession of Mills Heights. Michael Lang, who, like his young associates, wore jeans and casual clothing, listened with an outward show of boredom as Eager recounted the facts. Lang had become callous to the Establishment’s mandatory show of sovereignty, the gothic ignorance of political power. He remembered how they had destroyed his first head shop in Miami and knew that they were out to do the same thing to his festival. As far as rights were concerned, they were impotent, and that defeat was visibly etched on his face.
Eager called Stan Goldstein as his first witness, then Mel Lawrence, and Don Ganoung, all of whom diligently answered his questions concerning their respective duties. Yes, they had fixed traffic posts and area mobile patrol units for inner and outer security. No, there weren’t any fences around the camping area, but a six-foot-high chain-link fence surrounded the festival grounds. Yes, the traffic and security personnel had credentials—all outlined in detail in Exhibit #20. The painstaking itemization seemed endless.
“Mr. Chairman,” Eager said, checking his watch to let the board know he was mindful of the hour, “I have two more witnesses.”
As Michael Lang rose and walked to the front of the room, the gallery erupted with a barrage of insults and hissing. “Isn’t he pretty?” one man called, cupping his hand around his mouth, and then falling back in hysterics. “A he? Why, I thought it was a she!” someone answered from the other side of the room. Two or three men, seated near the front with their arms folded over noticeable paunches, chimed in with kissing sounds.
Owen let the mockery run its course before calling for order. He, too, seemed to derive pleasure from the sheepish grin on Michael’s face, which they wrongly read as embarrassment. It was indulgence.
Michael, like those witnesses before him, provided the board with a thumbnail sketch of his background. “And you are now one of the principals of Woodstock Ventures and production supervisor?”
“That’s right. The others are Mr. Joel Rosenman, Mr. John Roberts, and Mr. Artie Kornfeld.”
Eager continued with his examination as Joseph Owen quietly got up from his chair and walked over to the American flag stand.
“Mr. Lang—can you please tell us what was done between April 14 and June 13, 1969, by Woodstock Ventures?”
“I’m not going to allow him to answer that.” Everyone’s head swiveled to where Owen was standing. The intended image of the town attorney defending the flag against a band of conspiratorial hippies was farcical, indeed. “This has nothing to do with the hearing at hand.”
Eager argued that the activities during that period revealed the nature of the event and the precautionary measures the staff had taken to insure a professional, safe festival. To deprive them of that right defeated the entire purpose of a hearing. The rest of the board overruled Owen’s denial.
Reading from a slip of paper in his hand, Michael related how he and his partners had firmed commitments with contractors, booked performing artists, employed a full staff of experts and prepared plans and and designs, which amounted to an outlay of over $457,000.
“I want that list of expenses put into evidence,” Owen said, pointing to Lang’s crib sheet.
“I’m sorry, Joe,” Eager interrupted, “but I cannot allow that to be done. There are notes on the bottom of that paper that are not intended for anybody else’s eyes.”
“I don’t care. I demand, on behalf of the zoning board of appeals, that the whole piece of paper that Mr. Lang read from be inserted into the record.”
Eager shook his head. Owen was making a fool out of his office, yet it only cast suspicion on his clients. “This is only a memorandum used by Mr. Lang to refresh his memory. I’m going to leave it up to him to decide whether he wants it submitted or not.”
“I’d prefer not to have it submitted,” Michael said.
“Mark Exhibit #25 refused in evidence,” Owen growled.
“We’re totally committed to the plans, the event, and the site,” Michael continued. He explained that after June 13, when they realized there was going to be contention from local residents, they slowed their progress a bit. “Now, we’ve gotta commit ourselves to finishing the project. We’ve got a responsibility to the people who are coming to the show. I hesitate to think what would happen if forty thousand people came to Wallkill and there was no event.”
The statement, according to an account the next day in the Times Herald Record, “unsettled the audience.” Several gasps were heard as residents turned to one another in utter horror. The thought of reconciling forty thousand disappointed hippies had not occurred to them. Why, it could almost wind up worse than allowing the festival to take place on Mills’s farm.
“I think, with the help of the town, we can provide something everyone can be proud of and something that the town would want back next year.”
“Don’t count on it, y’ bum!”
“Look in the mirror, and then talk about pride!”
Sam Eager motioned him off the stand, and Michael slipped numbly back into his seat.
At 10:50, with tempers badly frayed on both sides of the controversy, Owen called for a five-minute recess.
When the hearing reconvened, Herbert Freer announced that it was now the townspeople’s turn to fire questions at the festival representatives.
And so it went, for another two hours, with local residents picking over facts that had been given them two or three times already during the course of the meeting. Everyone who wanted a shot at the hippies was given a chance, including their most dependable arch-rivals, Richard Dow and Cliff Reynolds. Reynolds was actually quite timid in his approach, lingering on the subject of arresting people during the festival. He insinuated that whenever one hundred thousand people get together there is a possibility of trouble occurring and that the state police would be on hand to deal with perpetrators in the proper manner. Reynolds, though, was emerging as a master in the art of scare tactics. By leading the audience’s attention to the eventuality of trouble, he added that “a citizen’s arrest could be made for anything from a traffic violation on up.”
“That’s all this crowd’s got to know.” Lawrence wondered if that law applied to his arresting Reynolds for attempting to incite a riot.
By 1:00 in the morning, half the people in the spectators’ gallery had either left or stomped out to emphasize a point that had been made. A woman named Ann Kelsh was the last to make a dramatic exit. Raising a clenched fist at Sam Eager, she bellowed: “Now there will be three days, twenty-four hours a day, of interference. I will call you every time I am bothered. Perhaps you should pay for my baby sitter for the hours I wasted here tonight. People should go and visit their neighbors around the area!” Then she flew out the door in a rage.
There was one more point of order from the floor before Herbert Freer called for a motion to adjourn. As the last Wallkill citizen reclaimed his seat, two board members jumped at the chance to end the ordeal. The rest of the board members so moved to grant their request, and by 1:20 A.M., the last car turned out of the town hall parking lot onto the deserted highway.
• • •
The Wallkill Zoning Board of Appeals passed judgment on the status of Woodstock Ventures’ application for a permit the next morning, July 15, 1969, in a closed session at the town hall. By 3:00 that same afternoon, most everyone within a ten-mile radius had heard their decision.
Mel Lawrence was standing in front of the field office signing a bill of lading when the phone on his desk rang. The tru
ck driver, holding the clipboard on which Mel was writing, was in a rush. He had driven all night to deliver the seventy Georgia-pine telephone poles that were to be used for the stage support and wanted to head back south while there was still enough daylight.
“Penny, will you get that,” Lawrence called, putting the finishing touches on the receipt.
“It’s for you,” she called back.
“Can’t you see that I’m busy! Take a message.”
“It’s Michael. He says to tell you it’s urgent.”
Lawrence handed the clipboard back to the driver. “You can drop the poles just over that rise where the crew is standing.” He waved his thanks, climbed the ladder to his loft office, and picked up the phone. “Hey Michael—what’s shakin’?”
“It’s blown.”
“What’s blown? What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
“I just got the word. Listen to this: ‘In a unanimous decision, the five-member board handed exposition promoters their most serious setback to date by refusing to allow them to build anything on their 200-acre site.’”
“Ah shit! You mean those fuckers turned down our application?”
“That’s it, man. We’re gone. We gotta start lookin’ for another site.”
“Fuck ’em. Let’s stay and fight.”
“Well, I’m gonna talk to Eager about that later, but the vibes I’m gettin’ aren’t too good, man. It looks like we’re gonna get the boot. Just do me a favor—okay?”
“Sure,” Lawrence said dejectedly. “Name it.”
“Don’t put anything on the site we can’t take with us.”
“Don’t worry, there’s nothin’ here we’ve gotta—oh shit, hang on a second.”
The logs! he thought. They’re gonna drop the fuckin’ logs! “Hold it!” he screamed out the second-story window of the barn. “Don’t drop those logs!” They couldn’t hear him. He knocked over half the accessories on his desk trying to get to the ladder and out to the staging area before three tons of telephone poles could be dumped across Mills Heights. How could this be happening, he wondered, flailing his arms in the air as he ran up the embankment that looked out over the bowl. Lang had said nothing permanent. Those poles were practically as unmovable lying on the ground as they’d be after they were sunk into cement. No one on the staff was big enough to move them without the proper machinery, and it would cost a fortune to have them professionally loaded on to a flatbed truck.
As he came up over the rise, he could see the driver climb back into the cab of the truck and drop his hand to the discharge mechanism that would slide the load off the rear platform.
“Don’t drop those logs! Wait! Noooo!” Lawrence screamed. But a second ill wind was about to hit the Town of Wallkill that afternoon. As he ran toward the truck, a strong country breeze rushed through the barren orchard and muffled his cries. It was not substantial enough, however, to dampen the clamor as the telephone poles rolled off the truck and tumbled onto the soft grass. Lawrence dropped to his knees and watched in horror until the last pole came to rest on the heap. The driver’s aim had been precise; he had delivered the Parthian shot.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Back into Battle
Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all the Archangel: but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost
1
Thirty-one days—that was all that kept ringing in Mel Lawrence’s head as he paced across the floor of what, only yesterday, had been his production office. That morning, an eviction notice had been posted on the front door of Howard Mills’s barn telling Woodstock Ventures to pack up its belongings and clear out. No one was certain whether or not it was a legal document, but it raised a perfectly legitimate point: What was the purpose of maintaining headquarters in the barn if there wasn’t going to be a festival? Since word had leaked out about the zoning board of appeal’s decision, contractors and suppliers had stopped by to collect outstanding accounts and the attorney general’s office had phoned to ask whether they intended to make good on tickets that had already been purchased. It was as near to a disaster as Lawrence had ever been in in his life. And, yet, when Lang asked him if he could still get it together on another site in time, he heard himself answer, “Yes.” Was he out of his mind? He only had thirty-one days left.
Mel picked up a late edition of the Times Herald Record from off a desk. There, under a story about the Apollo 11 blastoff, was an update on their own uncertain destination, entitled “Festival to Sue Wallkill.” Much good it’d do them, he thought, as he skimmed the article. It began: “The promoters of the controversial Aquarian Exposition, which has drawn nationwide attention, ordered their lawyers . . . to prepare a damage suit against the Town of Wallkill Zoning Board of Appeals and unnamed individuals who have opposed their proposed three-day folk-rock festival.” There was a slew of promises from John Roberts to the effect that, come August 15, a festival would take place on Howard Mills’s property as planned; they had no intention of moving or canceling the show. Lawrence’s stomach wrenched as he read an opinion the reporter had gotten from Cliff Reynolds. “These people are in complete disregard for the laws of the town,” he said. “They come in with the pretension of upholding the law and are now in flagrant violation of it.” As far as Reynolds was concerned, his own lawsuit was still pending, and that would finish the festival off, once and for all.
Mel hated to admit it, but he agreed with the state cop. As of last count, they had sold close to fifty thousand tickets for each day and had spent just over a half-million dollars, but without land, it was practically hopeless. Even if Michael managed to produce another site, how was he expected to prepare and construct the grounds in three weeks’ time? In a practical sense, the feat was impossible.
As he refolded the paper and flung it down on the desk, the phone rang. It was Michael Lang in Manhattan.
“We’re gonna make a move.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, man. We’ll find another place. Look, don’t worry. I’m comin’ up.”
Within two hours, Lawrence and Lang were securely belted into the cabin of a rented helicopter and swinging over the sylvan New York countryside in search of a new home for the festival. They made a half-dozen stops, touching down whenever they saw a large, unplanted field, but the land proved to be either too swampy or provided no access to the site. When they got back to Wallkill, Ticia was waiting for them in the barn.
“Some guy named Elliot just called,” she said. “He said that he lives in the town of White Lake, about twenty-five miles away, and that the whole town wants the festival moved up there. And get this: he says he’s got the most perfect property for us! I told him we’d be up there this afternoon.”
“Groovy!” Lang said, slapping Lawrence’s palm.
Ticia kissed them both on the cheek. “Stanley’s already up there looking at it. I told him that you guys’d meet him as soon as you get back.” She gave them directions, and, within minutes, they were on their way.
White Lake, in the Town of Bethel, Sullivan County, had, at one time, been a small, fashionable resort that attracted Orthodox Jewish families from all parts of the world. Its chief attraction, of course, was a sandy shored lake, originally named Kauneonga by the Indians, around which lay a web of rhododendron-lined lanes extending out to quaint cottages. In the 1940s and 1950s, however, most of the summer clientele moved a few miles south to the rejuvenated Borscht Belt, where Grossinger’s, the Concord, Kutcher’s, and Brown’s lured them with Las Vegas–type entertainment, and White Lake, instead of competing, never recovered from the exodus. Even the hordes of faithful anglers, who, each season, came to pluck carmine-spotted
brook trout and pike from out of the pure, clear water, disappeared. The residents of White Lake had been too slow to respond to what was a simple public relations problem, and their former prosperity plummeted to embarrassing, incurable lows.
Lawrence and Lang could not help but appreciate the rolling, uneven fields as they pulled Michael’s white Porsche into the gravel-topped parking lot of the El Monaco Motel, where Ticia told them Stanley Goldstein would be waiting for them. The roads were in good condition, the air was pine scented and scintillating, and there seemed to be little enough commercial activity in the area so they couldn’t be accused of interrupting the livelihood of the town’s inhabitants. White Lake had been used to crowds of frenzied tourists pouring into the community each summer; though it had been some time since the town’s boardinghouses had flourished, Michael and Mel imagined they’d be greeted there with open arms.
Their fantasy nearly came true. As they stepped out of the car, the front door of the motel opened and Goldstein and a young man, introduced to them as Elliot Tieber, the proprietor of the El Monaco Motel, gamboled out and, at once, were all over them. There was a site, large, it was available, permits weren’t necessary, no, Stanley hadn’t seen it yet, but Elliot’s description of it was tantalizing.
“Follow me down the hill,” Elliot said, pointing to a sloping grade around the side of the building.
Together the four young men trudged down the bank—Stanley in the lead, Mel and Michael close behind him, and Elliot following a few steps in back of the pack. Michael was the first to notice that the ground was soft and, in places, slushy. A sloshing sound began to keep time with their pace, and by the time they reached the bottom of the hill, the cuffs on all of their trousers were splattered with mud.
