In summers when we were kids it was family barbeques around the swimming pool. My Dad had a fancy built-in brick barbeque he loved. From maybe age 8 I was a master of making completely from scratch Lemon Meringue pies, no lemon pudding for me, I used tons of lemons and grated peel so very tangy, and extra vanilla in the meringue, and very good quality butter in the pie crust. My mother always asked how do you get the crust so flaky and light. It’s using very cold butter cut in, and ice cold water, and as few a cuts and as little handling as possible and even rolling it out lightly. Over-handling makes dough tough. Delicious. Also made peach pies and Boston Cream Pie and excellent carrot cake.

August 1969 I was living in Haight Ashbury, listening to music from the panhandle and wishing I had the money to go to New York.

I was playing baseball, and getting ready to switch elementary schools. My sister got transferred from Southwood Elementary to Townline Elementary School within the Kentwood Public Schools system. My mother didn’t want us attending separate schools, so she filed to have me transferred to Townline. I’m a very strange guy in that I have photographic images of many things past, often trivial. For example, I’m sitting in the second-grade class at Townline and another boy nudges me and points at this kid who’s sitting there playing with a pencil instead of focusing on what the teacher is saying. We get a chuckle out of that. I could go on and on with recollections of little things like that. 1969 was so incredibly long ago, and I was only 7, but I can actually visualize many things in my mind from that year, including when the astronauts first stepped on the moon in July of that year. Pertaining to Woodstock, it may’ve been a drug-infested, youthful immaturity, but the hippies were far-sighted in terms of idealism that is missing today. As Elvis Costello once sang, “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?” I just remember, as a child, it being a very loving, together time in my neighborhood, but I was also aware that there was a terrible war going on and a lot of people were concerned about that and riots.

Specifically, I got caught in the five state traffic jam created by Woodstock. Worst traffic jam I remember. We were stuck for hours. Generally, I was preparing to move from the east coast to California to go to college at UC Berkeley, so I had just quit my job, and was making dozens of lists and last minute visits to east coast pals. If I had not been so busy, it would have been fun to go to the concert. But I don’t feel deprived. When I got to San Francisco, I went to lots of free concerts in Golden Gate park and I didn’t even have to camp in the mud.

I love the photo of the nun making the peace sign. We need more of that kind of nun these days. Where was I? Well it was 2 months before my 12th birthday and a month before starting 7th grade… probably out buying school supplies. But at that age I was very aware of the war which seemed like it would never end.

I was going into my Senior year of high school. I had been stunned by the shootings at Ohio State, but the song about it that CSN & Y sang at Woodstock armored me for Life. I am not afraid to question “authority,” nor to challenge those who perceive themselves as more “powerful” or “significant” than I. Listening to the music from that era brings me right back: to the thoughts, feelings, and spirit of those times. I suspect, as I hurtle toward Geezerhood, that it will invigorate me more than any B-12 shots ever will. I wasn’t AT Woodstock - my parents barely let me out of the yard! - but Woodstock changed my life.