Herm Card is the City Eagle's roving street reporter and photographer as well as the Eagle's Poetry Editor.
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He is an English teacher, poet, educational consultant, and motivational speaker. He has been a college baseball player and coach, military officer, tournament squash player and NCAA baseball umpire. He is also a Museum Educator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and co-editor of the academic journal, "The English Record."
When I taught my eighth grade English classes about the poetry of Bob Dylan’s lyrics, I always included a cultural literacy unit on the 1960s. Someone always asked if I had been at Woodstock. When I told them I had not, and they asked why, I told them the story.
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At 7:00 AM on Saturday August 16, 1969, I pulled into the parking lot of the West End Armory in Binghamton, NY. A private in the New York Army National Guard, I was in Binghamton for my monthly Active Duty for Training weekend. For 16 hours over the two days, I would wear the uniform of my country, having just completed the first year of my six-year military obligation.
I had joined the National Guard the previous summer, just in time to avoid being drafted. I was on waiting lists in a couple of reserve military units, but too far down to be helped. I had contacted the local National Guard unit, but was told the waiting list was closed. I was resigned to what was becoming inevitable. National Guard unit, but was told the waiting list was closed. I was resigned to what was becoming inevitable. My student deferment vanished when my diploma was issued. My bad knee was not bad enough. A friend’s offer of “some pills that will turn you urine green for your physical” was ludicrous.
Ironically, that same well meaning if misinformed friend was on the waiting list even though he turned out to be declared 4F (medically exempt). He proved to be the key to the rest of the story though, because when he went to the armory to be officially excused, he found out that the waiting list was now open again. He called me, I headed for the armory. Then guard directed me to the second floor and I walked into the first open door I saw. I said hello and told First Sergeant Richard Fancher that I wanted to get on the waiting list to join the national guard. He asked if I had an hour or so to take some tests. I did, and did. I returned the tests to him, he told me to wait a few minutes while he graded them. He said that if I came back next Saturday at 0800, (8 AM civilian time) I would be inducted into the New York State National Guard.
“Inducted?”
“Right.”
“No waiting list?”
“No.”
“But my friend said the waiting list just opened up.”
“That’s the infantry unit down the hall. Do you want to get in Saturday or wait for them?”
“See you Saturday.”
So, slightly over a year later, my former baseball teammate, Sergeant Hank Dellos, wearing Military Police armbands, directed me to a parking space. There had not been an MP in the parking lot since I had been in the unit.
“What’s up?”
“We’re on alert for Woodstock.”
Woodstock? I had heard of it, but it hadn’t meant much. Some of my friends in Syracuse had been talking about going, but it was a long drive for a concert. I had no interest, I had no choice if I did – my weekend was booked.
I parked, headed for the drill hall. The place was buzzing. There was something going on that was unfamiliar. Officers and NCOs were everywhere. Equipment was being organized in the drill hall…orders shouted, bodies in motion, and the drill hadn’t even begun yet. Something was definitely going on.
At 8 sharp we fell in. Our company commander called us to attention, gave the command “parade rest,” and filled us in. We were, indeed, on alert for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in a place called Bethel New York.
Orders of the day were given. Much of the day would be spent in reviewing our training in combating civil disturbance. Team assignments were reviewed. Cautionary tales of the thruway being closed and predictions of a crowd of over half a million spread throughout the ranks.
And then, words that I can still hear clearly 40 years later: “Pvt. Card will command the gas dispersal team.”
Pvt. Card will command the gas dispersal team?
I knew that I was ON the gas dispersal team, but I hadn’t dreamed that I might suddenly be in charge of it. I knew that the previous summer I had attended Chemical, Biological and Nuclear warfare school and because of some bizarre situation where there was nothing else to do at Fort Drum but study, I had been the top student in the class. What I hadn’t dreamed of was that my brief burst of academic success would put me, essentially, in the position of possibly having to fire tear gas at people much like myself. Unlike me, however, they would be at Woodstock to have fun.
I had been inducted into the National Guard with 34 other men my age all sharing similar background, most just out of college or newly settled into a job and all of us wishing to serve our military obligation at home. Now, it had taken on an entirely new and ironic meaning.
Apparently there was great concern in Albany that among the people “going down to Yasgur's farm” there would be a riot “half a million strong.”
Alas – and fortunately – there was sufficient miscalculation of risk that I was able to spend the entire weekend in Binghamton mulling over what it would be like to stand with four other men wearing olive drab uniforms and armed with a tear gas disperser in front of an angry mob of hippies wearing the uniform of the growing counter culture and armed with who knows what.
I was uncomfortable with the image.
Woodstock turned into something far different than planned, far different than predicted and far different than feared. What it turned into was an iconic moment in American history, a gathering of a cross section of the American culture, most of whom were there because it was close enough and easy enough to get to and seemed like it was going to be a lot of fun. Forty years later, in the retelling, it is probably bigger, better, more widely attended and a lot more important that it really was – but isn’t everything like that?
I, too, turned into something far different than planned, far different than predicted and far different than feared, and as a result, my Woodstock story became simply part of a lesson plan on the 1960s, a tale of how people can in a brief moment, create something good that becomes legend in the retelling, yet gives a glimpse of the promise of an era that itself symbolized promise.
