The 50th Anniversary of Woodstock, from a More Commercial Perspective.

It's been 50 years today since the Woodstock Festival began in Bethel, NY. To most people today it's emblematic of peace, love, freedom, sharing, and really, really great drugs.

To my family, it was a bonanza.

You see, my Aunt Florence and Uncle Herbie owned the Holiday Inn in Liberty, NY, the then-newest (built in 1967) and nicest hotel close to the Festival. All the acts stayed at the Holiday.

Do you really think they were going to sleep in the mud, when they could have a hot shower and a pu-pu platter in the American/Chinese/Polynesian/Whatever restaurant?

I was a little too young (10) to realize exactly what was happening (at the same time I was also slogging through a horrific, therapy-inducing Summer at overnight camp. I could have used some mushrooms.)

Several years later I asked my Uncle Herbie, a Brooklyn guy who followed Florence to the Catskills, what Woodstock was really like, since he was there. Herbie smiled and said,

"Jimmy, it was the best bar business I had in my life! Those people drank like fish. I said, 'Screw New York State, I'm keeping the bar open day and night.'

"They had the helio-copers taking them from the show, to the show. The helio-copters landed over there on the lawn.

"This guy with hair down to his pupik come up to me and says, 'We want to run a tab.' I looked at him and said, 'Ok, but who are you?' He said, 'We're the Jefferson Airplane.' I didn't know the Jefferson Airplane from TWA, so I asked for a bank reference. He said to call Bank of America. So I called California and asked if they were good for the tab. The guy at Bank of America laughed and said, 'Whatever the bill is, add three zeros. They won't know the difference.'"

Then there was my bubbie Sadie. Sadie was a refugee from Russia or Poland, depending on who was running that week's pogrom. She learned enough English to get along, but never quite got America, and certainly didn't understand the cultural revolution of the 1960s, though she enjoyed the pastel outfits on the Lawrence Welk Show when my aunt gave her a color TV.

Sadie would sit in the back of the bar, in her boxy suit and brown wig, underneath a black lit velvet nude ("Florence says the pictures sell more drinks.") and fold the cloth napkins for the restaurant. Florence would pick her up at her apartment house, drive her over to the Holiday, and the napkins were folded fast. It was Sadie's pleasure to help out.

Grace Slick came into the dining room wearing a fringe leather vest with nothing underneath. When Sadie saw this, she came running up to Slick and started shoving cloth napkins into the vest, "You shouldn't walk around like that, you'll get pneumonia from the air conditioning. It's not right you should be like this! Go back and get a tzvetter."

Grace started to protest, but everyone around her started chanting, "Get a tzvetter, get a tzvetter." She knew she was no match for Sadie, and returned a few minutes later in a sweater. Crisis averted.

Swami Satchidananda told Aunt Florence that she was too fidgety and nervous (the understatement of the 20th Century), and would she have tea with him under the Holiday Inn sign and talk about peace and spiritual enlightenment. Florence declined, and told me "Are you kidding? Spiritual, hell, he looked like the picture on the Smith Brothers cough drop box."

Later my mother said, "Your Aunt's idea of spiritual enlightenment is finding a Norell knockoff at Loehmann's."

All the family members who were there have ascended heavenward, booked by the celestial Holidex, Florence a few weeks ago, but the weekend of Aquarian living with a little Chivas and a tzvetter live on in memory.

Postscript: While the picture doesn't show the Liberty, NY Holiday Inn during its glory days, it's pretty close to the place I remember.