Fifty years after the original Woodstock Music and Art Fair, it sounds almost cliche to call it a life-changing experience for those who were there. 

There have been so many stories and documentaries and other retrospectives, you almost expect a Woodstock attendee to say it wasn't that big of a deal. A fun '60s memory. Maybe a little over-hyped and overrated. 

But maybe some ideas become cliches for a reason: For Tom Truesdell, his time at Woodstock altered the course of his life.

The 67-year-old Appleton man was there in August 1969, trouncing through the mud in Bethel, New York, with hundreds of thousands of fellow baby boomers. He and his teenage buddies saw Santana and the Grateful Dead, drank beer and smoked weed, fought off hunger and dehydration with their temporary brothers and sisters and, as the story goes, came home changed. 

"I was not like a lot of the Woodstock attendees," said Truesdell, who was 17 and headed for his senior year of high school. "It was a rather eye-opening experience. 'Look at that big pipe all those guys are smoking! Oh, it's a hookah.' I had never seen a hookah before. So, being a small-town boy and being pretty isolated, it was ... all sorts of people I'd never seen before." 

Truesdell grew up in Walton, New York, about 45 miles from the 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel where Woodstock was staged Aug. 15-18, 1969. That's really the only reason he went — it was nearby and one of his friends saw an ad in the New York Daily News. Tickets were $7 per day, but Truesdell and his five friends got a discount for ordering early. It sounded like a fun outdoor concert and nothing more. 

With a short haircut, an affinity for sports and aspirations of joining the military, Truesdell wasn't the stereotypical Woodstock patron. When people today dress as a hippie for Halloween, they look nothing like him at 17. 

"If I had been asked I would have said I was a Republican," he said. "I was planning on going to West Point. My father was a career Army guy and after that weekend I didn't want to do that anymore. I changed."

'This is way weirder'

Legend has it about 100,000 tickets were sold, but the crowds stretched way beyond that. Fences came down early on the first day and people just kept showing up. Before long Woodstock was declared free and open to all comers. Some estimates put somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 people having descended on the farm.

Because of the number of people — and the lack of organization to the whole operation, which too has become legendary — just getting to the grounds was an adventure. Truesdell and his crew had to park six or seven miles away and walk the rest of the way, lugging cases of Genesee 12 Horse Ale and whatever small amount of belongings they packed. 

One of the standout memories is of passing by a New York state trooper on the walk to Max Yasgur's farm. In those days, as Truesdell put it, state troopers and the kinds of people going to Woodstock didn't have a reputation for getting along. 

"New York state troopers were people to be afraid of," he said. "They were mostly Vietnam or Korean War or World War II vets. They had to be 6-foot-2 and weigh 200 pounds and be able to do 5,000 push-ups or something. 

"We got about 50 feet away and one of my friends said, 'Look at his hat.' He had a daisy in the brim of his hat. We're like, oh — this is way weirder than we thought it was. He was like, 'Hey boys, be careful, have a good time. Go on up that way.' That was a world-changing experience right there." 

Talkin' 'bout my generation

Truesdell said arriving on the scene and getting eyes on the sea of people on the bowl-shaped field that made for a natural amphitheater was psychologically revolutionary. They got settled in time to see the weekend's first performer, Richie Havens. Among those who'd follow on the mostly around-the-clock schedule: Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, the Who, Jefferson Airplane, the Band and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. 

"My town had about 3,500 people in it. The county I grew up in had about 30,000 people in it," said Truesdell, who moved to Appleton in the early 1990s. "There were 10 times as many people in front of me as there was in the county I had spent my life in. ... That's a vivid memory. I can see that right now." 

The self-described "country boys" had tickets for Friday and Saturday — not that tickets mattered — and couldn't stick around for the entire thing. Shows carried on into Monday morning but Truesdell started two-a-day practices for the upcoming football season early Monday morning.

For that reason they missed the last show of the festival, where Jimi Hendrix gave his now-iconic performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in front of a dwindling crowd. (The gang from Walton weren't the only ones who had to bail early.)

"I really remember Santana," Truesdell said. " ... Nobody had heard any music like Santana, with the percussion and the sort of Latino rhythms and Carlos Santana's style of playing." 

The weather famously wasn't great and access to food, water and restrooms was worse. The conditions ended up being the story as far as the national news was concerned, but also helped define what was so special. Truesdell said at the time they had no idea they were a part of something people would be talking about 50 years later, but it was made clear when they got home they were "war criminals, as far as our parents were concerned." 

Crazed, foolish hippies or not, the half-million youngsters took care of each other. It was as advertised: three days of peace and music.

"It wasn't because of the music, it wasn't because of the drugs," Truesdell said. "... It was really the people. People treated each other really nicely. We were all in trouble, you know. We were hot, we were hungry, we were wet, we were covered in mud."

'I'm amazed we didn't all die'

Instead of going on to take the entrance exam for West Point, Truesdell wound up studying at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and, years later, University of Virginia for his doctorate. He spent much of his career as a college administrator and taught literature and history. He even taught a class on the '60s and, yes, Woodstock was discussed.

It was only about a dozen or so years ago he got his hands on his one keepsake. After returning home (and in need of a shower, no doubt), Truesdell put his jeans in the laundry and forgot his tickets in his back pocket. His mother might not have been pleased about the hippie haven in Bethel, but she hung on to those tickets in secret, only to hand them back to her son some 40 years later — much to his delight.

They're now framed. Evidence he was there, where countless music fans wish they could have been.

Forgetting a piece of history in the back pocket of your jeans is one of a few foolish moves by the group of "dumb kids," as Truesdell put it. Another was how they prepared for the weekend of hanging out in a hot, squishy farm field. For instance: Part of their food supply was, for some reason, a canned ham.

"We chowed on that for like a day and a half," he said, laughing. "I'm amazed we didn't all die."

They also were left, like many others, to rely on soda and other beverages for hydration. This was long before the days of bottled water, but people helped each other out. Strangers came to the aid of strangers.

There was another water supply nearby but they never came across it.

"You know, I never found that damn pond where people were going skinny dipping," he said. "That still bugs me. I would have done some of that."

As a history professor, Truesdell would later put the events of that weekend in the context of an evolving — and fracturing — culture. With 50 years of hindsight, he can see how the events of the era set the course for what followed, including the divisive social and political times we live in today. 

Woodstock, of course, landed near the end of a year as loaded with significant events. The Vietnam War raged on. Richard Nixon was sworn in as president. Americans walked on the moon. The Zodiac Killer and the Manson Family had the country on edge. Sides were drawn in those days, too. 

"As that experience sunk in and I integrated that with all the other stuff that was going on, in terms of the war and the new Nixon administration and what was practically a civil war over civil rights, all of that stuff together, it became clear that this was part of something bigger," Truesdell said. "As Mr. Zimmerman had said, the times they are a-changin'."


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