{DC Flashback is Lory Kohn's memoir about living through massive Vietnam protests in the fall of 1969}

Excerpt from DC Flashback

The best ever August
The best August ever continued. Our lawn ended where the bay began, a perfect setup for discovering the joys of clamming. You waded out thirty yards or so, dug your toes into the sand, and felt around for clamshells. It didn't take long to fill a couple of buckets. Then you could sell the lot to swank local dining spots for fourteen bucks a bucket. Fourteen bucks bought a couple of "nickel bags" (five bucks worth of marginal weed} and a sub sandwich at Uncle Milty's out on Sunrise Highway. What more could a guy want? Well, there was something, and it was heading my way. 

The middle of the month was significant for an epic social phenomenon you may have possibly have heard about: the Woodstock festival. Cultural anthropologists point to it as the defining event of the hippie era. Well, back then I was a hippy and now I'm a cultural anthropologist, so I can concur that it was—or at least it was for the next few months. 

That November, when Woodstock met its match, as luck would have it I was at that epochal event, too. But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

In the interest of brevity, I'll strip my Woodstock experience down to the bare essentials: 

1. In the summer of '69, unlike most archetypal hippy types living in Indiana or wherever, in the weeks prior to the "Three Days of Peace and Music" I wasn't exactly hurting for entertainment. I'd already seen most of the headlining acts at The Fillmore East. Plus I'd made that recent pilgrimage to Tanglewood. In other words attending the festival was less of a priority for me than it was for most of "Woodstock Nation." 
2. On Friday, as the epic weekend began, I was home visiting my folks in River Vale. I'd barely seen them all summer and truth be told was feeling a tad guilty about it. Reports about how huge and wondrous Woodstock was started trickling in. They began increasing in frequency and intensity as the crowd size swelled. By all estimates there was a surreal scene, going on up in New York state—history-in-the-making was within driving distance. I still resisted the temptation to go. 
3. Come Saturday, Woodstock was being widely hailed as the serendipitous event of the century. The expected crowd of 50,000 had swelled to ten times that amount. Promoters had thrown up their hands and declared it a free festival. Free or not, as the day went on, I was still on the fence about going. 
4. Finally, resistance was futile. Around 10 PM, my friend and fellow cannibal John who'd became immortal in School Play came to the conclusion that we'd never forgive ourselves if we didn't go. Now that we'd committed, we set off for wherever Woodstock was in his Austin-Healy Sprite (there were a lot more English imports back then). 
5. In 1969, few if any seventeen-year-old kids from River Vale, NJ had the foggiest idea where Woodstock, NY was. That's why an hour after we set out, we found ourselves crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge, proceeding due East—toward the wrong side of the Hudson River! Suddenly, it dawned on us that we were going the wrong way, an error that would surely take us about twenty miles out of our way. Somehow noticing a police turnaround, John made the world's quickest U-turn in the middle of the bridge! The brilliant maneuver went under-appreciated by the drivers behind us who desperately slammed on their brakes; oncoming cars we we cut in front of us were forced to do likewise. Screeching, head snapping, and evasive maneuvering ensued.  The resulting adrenaline rush insured that the trip was already legendary—although we were only an hour into it and nowhere near the festival. 
6. Back on course, or so it seemed according to our wrinkled foldup map which wasn't exactly overly detailed, eventually we made our way to what we believed was the general vicinity of Woodstock—only to recall the event was being held at some hole in the wall town called Bethel because the City of Woodstock had backed out at the last minute. Trying to find a farmer awake at 1 AM to ask directions to Yasgur's Farm in Bethel was sufficiently daunting. 
7. After making one wrong turn after another, at last we received a signal that we were getting warmer. Confirmation came as the lonesome two-lane country road we were traveling on gradually transformed into a four lane parking lot. Things appeared completely impassable. Anyone in their right mind would have stopped right there. But the road wasn't quite as impassable as it looked. Maniacally maneuvering the minnow-sized Sprite through miles of parked land yachts in little sideways darts and bursts, John zig-zagged through the maze of sheet metal ... until there really was absolutely nowhere left to go. 
8. Now it was 3 AM. We'd abandoned the Sprite and then we were walking ... and walking ... and walking ... toward the festival. Finally, around 5 AM, I identified the signature power chords of Peter Townshend and The Who in the distance. We joined the vast throng just in time for Tommy's majestic "See Me Feel Me Touch Me" climax. 
9. The thirty minutes we heard—the end of Tommy and a few encores—was fantastic. The Who smashed their gear as they left the stage to thunderous applause. 
10. At that point, a few logistical problems associated with sticking around for the next act and the last day of the festival reared their heads. Torrential rains had turned the place into a mudbath for 500,000, which is why The Airplane was preparing to go on at 7 AM instead of their scheduled 11 PM slot. We were beyond exhausted. It hadn't even occurred to us to bring a tent or sleeping bags. We had no food. And we had no water. People all around us were tripping out of their minds—we hadn't discovered that yet—it threw us for a loop. 
11. Retreat seemed like the only sensible option. We did, retracing our steps back to the Sprite, squirming back through the five-mile parking lot, steadfastly negotiating our way onward, back to the burbs of northeast "Joisey" where I found my Dad at his usual post attacking his 3,467th consecutive breakfast of Rice Krispies 'n milk at the kitchen table. The look he gave me was priceless. 

So, yeah, I was at Woodstock—for about thirty minutes! 

Back at the summer house on Peconic Bay, things were getting more and more electric with Carole. There were stolen kisses in the dusk as fireflies pulsed all around us, progressing to heavy makeout sessions under the stars. What a wonderful world it can be! 

Around August 23rd or so, Carole had a surprise for me: her well-off liberal parents were "doing Europe" and I was officially invited to spend a few days with her at at their "happening pad" on the Fashionable Upper East Side. The salt water air must have really gotten to her. 

We rode the LIRR to Penn Station, then taxied over chez Carole. A doorman let us in. An elevator man took us up to a "classic six" (rooms) pre-war apartment decorated with Eames loungers, a Saarinen table, and paintings belonging to a genre I recognized as "Op Art" from my many excursions to MOMA [Museum of Modern Art]. I'd developed an appreciation for "cul-cha." 

The Graduate
It looked like I was in. But I was still a bit hesitant, still a little bit in disbelief that I was shacking up with a sexy cosmopolitan sophisticate. It was hard to forget Carole was four years older than me; that factoid both intimidated me and ratcheted up the excitement. 

Things started off slowly. Being "film students," we talked about about how how great it would be if we could get in to see the summer's white-hot flick, The Graduate. You could tell from the posters that it was one of the more erotic films Hollywood had produced to that point. 

The Graduate was such a smash there wasn't much chance of scoring a ticket. We cabbed over to The Coronet theater on Third Avenue anyway. The same fates that drew us closer at Tanglewood weren't done with us yet; the last two tickets were reserved for us. 

The house lights dimmed. The film began. The pairing of Benjamin, who was worried about his future, and Mrs. Robinson, who had some practical ideas how to enhance his present, was "instructive" to say the least. If you couldn't fall in love with the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, you were deaf or dead. The Buck Henry screenplay offered some of the best lines of all time: "I have one word for you: plastics;" and "Mrs. Robinson, I think you're trying to seduce me." The promised eroticism was delivered in spades. All in all it was a memorable night at the movies. 

Back at the classic six, even a slower student like myself, enrolled in a film school that didn't exist, managed to fake the role of Benjamin capably enough. After all, I was a film veteran—I'd been in School Play, hadn't I?  

Reality intrudes
The following morning there was a voice in my head that wouldn't go away. It was telling me to call home. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where that was coming from. I mean, what kind of nebbish calls his mom from a woman's apartment while he's still there? 

Nonetheless, I dialed the familiar digits on one of the black rotary phones every NYC apartment seemed to have back then. 

Connie Kohn picked up on the first ring. She was agitated to say the least. 

“Where are you?” 

“I’m in The City . . . with a friend.” 

“What are you doing there? You’re supposed to be in Washington DC!” 

"What?" 

I was supposed to be in Washington DC? What was she talking about? I was speechless. It was like August 25th. Southampton College had started the first week of September. I figured I had at least a week of summer fun left before the school year began at American University—if not two. 

Boy, had I figured wrong! 

Next thing I knew, mom announced she was on her way into The City, to Carole's apartment no less, to pick up her embarrassed-beyond-words spawn. I was about to be plucked away from the best summer ever with another week left on our house rental—not to mention the rest of the weekend I was supposed to spend at the Classic Six with my Mrs. Robinson.. 

Gulp. 

Presently a buzzer blared and my mom walked into the prewar apartment. Let me put her entrance in perspective: I was in Carole's parents' apartment, but, at the moment, the only parent there was my mom. There was something seriously wrong with that picture. 

A few hours later I was staring at an untouched Hojo hot dog at an I-95 Service Area somewhere in Delaware. 

This is not happening. 

Delaware gave way to Maryland. Unwashed, without a wink of sleep, my thoughts a blend of last night's sensations coupled with a sense of dread and foreboding that was impossible to suppress. Inexorably, the family station wagon proceeded south down the Beltway to the District of Columbia.   

Arrival in our nation's capital
"Completely freaked out" accurately describes my state-of-mind in three words as I arrived to no fanfare whatsoever in The Capital of the Free World. 

Americanos had been told over and over by our Commander in Chief and military advisers like General William C. Westmoreland that "the free world" definitely didn't include "commie" countries like North Vietnam. They apparently operated on a different plane altogether, under the hammer and sickle of a great menace to the freedoms we took for granted, "the Russkies." 

Commie menace or not, a resilient army of Vietcong was somehow holding off ever-escalating numbers of American invaders troops, war machines, and chemical weapons. Any way you looked at it, the "third world" jungle nation's resistance against the Red, White and Blue was impressive. 

I'd only been in DC for five minutes: the Vietnam War vibe was already palpable.