Aug. 15, 1969, dawned in Bethel, New York, with mostly fair weather in the forecast.
One family shares its story from that watershed weekend.
Cindy Matthews, 69, Woodstock attendee
My parents didn’t want me to go.
They forbade me to go.
They said, There’re too many young people going.
You’ll get hurt or worse.
But I just said, You know what?
I went with girlfriends from high school.
We all piled into my 1968 Opel, and off we went.
Dorothy Setticase, 95, Cindy’s mom
It was horrible.
Number one, she was a young kid.
In my generation you pretty much stayed around the house until you were married.
I had no idea whatWoodstockwas.
I definitely wasn’t into that kind of music.
I’m someone who loves the big-band era of the 1940s and crooners like Frank Sinatra from the 1950s.
I could care less about rock n roll.
But, OK, you had to be lenient sometimes.
You had to let go.
Cindy was with friends.
It wasn’t like she was traveling alone.
So I thought, OK, they probably won’t get into too much trouble.
There was a huge traffic jam.
You could tell that almost everyone was heading to the same place.
It was hippie gridlock.
There was a 46 Chevy in front of me.
I remember that detail because it became a pretty important moment in my life.
We go, Yeah, we’re going!
So he says, Well, follow me.
I know a shortcut.
Just confused, you know?
I enlisted and was proud to serve, but my high morale was crushed when we got stateside.
I hightailed it out of there and couldn’t grow my hair fast enough.
He said, Why don’t you ask those three girls behind you to come with us?
That’s when I headed over and met, well, my future ex-wife.
