To Be Old and in Woodstock

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

Forty years ago this weekend, I was at the Woodstock concert, and now I am getting alarmed about all the retrospectives. They’re beginning to make me feel like Frank Buckles, the 108-year-old last surviving veteran of World War I. Although I will never come up with a line as good as Frank’s secret to a long life. (“When you start to die, don’t.”)

Also, it has brought back my concern about the fact that I do not have any memory whatsoever of having heard any music. Woodstock-wise, I am the walking definition of anhedonia.

I spent a lot of time trying to talk a state policeman into helping me charge the battery on the car I had borrowed from my boyfriend. And, having left the picnic basket behind on the front porch, I was in charge of finding food for myself, my brother and the six friends who came with us. This took a great deal of time, and involved making my way to a little town down the road, where the store shelves had been stripped nearly bare and the people seemed to feel as if they were living out an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

(More here.)