From The Summer of Love to Woodstock West

“Tried to hitch a ride to San Francisco
Gotta do the things I wanna do…”

In February, 1967, I was a sophomore living in Wright Quadrangle at Indiana University. The winter had been going on for about a century, it seemed, and I was beginning to think I would never see another warm day. Classes were dull and I had lost interest in being a student. The Vietnam War raged on. The Civil Rights movement was in full-bloom. I had attended rallies against the former and for the latter but cold weather was keeping everyone inside. An epidemic of stir-craziness was affecting us all. On top of everything else I had broken up with my girlfriend. That was one of the few things I had to feel happy about — more like relieved, but here it was a weekend night and I had no date. The dorm was a ghost town and I needed something to do.

I walked down to the room of my friend Ken Riffle to see if he wanted to do something. He did… he wanted to go drinking and make the rounds at a few local establishments and, unfortunately, I was an underage liability. He offered to pick up some beer on the way home and said maybe we would get together later. I was pretty sure that wouldn’t happen. I moped back to my room and saw that Dave Swinney’s door was open. Dave was a psych major from Queens who lived across the hall from me. I stuck my head in and said hi. It turned out Dave was in the same boat as me — no girlfriend, nothing to do, and Dave certainly did not need to study. I always considered him to be a mass of brain material in the form of a human being.

Dave was 21 and could have gone out with Ken, but instead said he wanted to go to the Kiva — a campus coffee house in the Union building. He said he had read about the act playing there and thought it should be good. I decided anything was better than staying in my dorm room so I tagged along.

We almost didn’t make it. Dave was wearing shoes with slick leather soles and twice during our walk over there he slipped on ice and landed on his butt.

Undaunted, we arrived and ran into some guys we knew from another floor. We ordered soft drinks — no alcohol allowed on campus. The act was pretty good. I don’t remember the name of the group but it played a variety of folk and semi-rock songs peppered with not a few double-entendres. Pretty entertaining. At one point the lead singer said he and his group were headed for San Francisco later that year. He talked about a “Hippie Fest” that was apparently going to be a big thing, and how great it would be for people to gather there for the biggest celebration ever of peace, love and harmony. And drugs. And girls.

Dave and I started the trek back to the dorm. We took a different route back which would be better lighted and less likely to have more ice for him to fall on. We didn’t say much. Finally, about the time we reached Showalter Fountain, a campus landmark, we both had the same thought, “You ever been to San Francisco?” Neither of us had.

That was the start of the adventure.

We decided to go. Dave and I spent the remainder of the school year planning the trip. I had to figure out a way to fake my parents out so I could go while Dave rounded up transportation through a guy he knew. Dave didn’t have to worry about his parents since he had planned to keep his room and stay the entire summer. I was supposed to work as an orderly at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.

So, Indiana University had these programs called “Postsession” and “Intersession.” Each was a two-week concentration of classes in which a student could get up to three hours of credit in a short time. My plan was to convince my parents I needed to go to one or both to pick up some hours so I could lighten my load the following semester. That would give me a buffer to get out there with Dave after classes ended, come back to Indy, work and get back out there if the second trip was worth it. (It was. More on that later.)

I was surprised at how easy it was to sell my parents on the hair-brained scheme. Dad was pretty much for it from the beginning. Mom wanted me to stay and get more work in at the hospital. I assured her when I got back there would be plenty of overtime and I could make up for any lost revenue. I also told them I had enough saved from my campus job in the dorm cafeteria to pay for the classes (fact is, I didn’t have a campus job that year). Bottom line… mission accomplished.

Dave rounded up a ride with some guy named Herb. It turned out I sort of knew him too. He had been in one of my classes. Herb had a lot of money. Or, I guess I should say his daddy had a lot of money. He had been in a Freshman French class with me and a couple of times he gave me a ride back to the dorm in his Austin. I was so impressed by the fact he had a stereo in there. It was the first eight-track I ever saw. Uber-rich Herb made even more money by arranging spring break trips. He would charter a plane and sell tickets to warm-weather destinations and get to go for free off the profits. The purpose of him giving me rides was to sell me on going on one of them. When he found out I wasn’t interested, the friendship cooled.

The weekend before finals I moved most of my stuff back to Indy. The minute our final exams were over we headed west. Herb’s Austin was one of the models with a back seat so Dave and I fit nicely into it with what little luggage we had. It took us three days to get out there. We stopped at cheap motels along the way. Dave and I shared a room to cut expenses and Herb had his own. I thought it was the longest, most excruciating trip ever, but found out later I was wrong.

When we (finally) got to San Francisco, Herb and Dave decided to go get some beer. Since I was underage, they thought they should go without me. I never quite understood that strategy, but they thought it was best not to have a minor along. I grabbed my sleeping roll and gym bag (allegedly to make room for the beer) and they dropped me off at a place called the “Free Store,” cleverly named because everything inside was free. We were in the land of the Hippies for sure now.

Nothing else to do, I went into the Free Store. I was actually surprised by how much stuff was in there. Some junk, but some really useful items. Like soap. I wandered around and spied a canvas pup tent on one of the tables. I figured it might come in handy since Herbie probably wouldn’t spring for rooms for us at the Mark Hopkins, so I snapped it up.

Loaded down with a bulky sleeping roll, bulky pup tent and a stuffed gym bag, I went across the street and sat on a bench to wait for Dave and Herb. As it turned out, I never saw Dave again for the whole trip and only saw Herb once.

While I was sitting there a girl sat down on the other end, pulled out a map and studied it. I decided this was no time to be shy and struck up a conversation. Her name was Barbara Jean McGee. She was from Eugene, Oregon and was attending the University there. She was a sophomore and said she was probably going to major in English, but wasn’t sure. She liked sports, was a Duck fan and had come down to get away from her parents who were suffocating her. I told her as much about myself and said I could sympathize as someone who had experience with the parent-suffocation syndrome. I asked where she was staying and she said she had been there for two days and was sleeping in her car. She said it: the magic word — “car.” She also said some of her sorority sisters had rented a place in South San Francisco, but she thought it was too far away. Actually it was only a few miles but the traffic really sucked.

For all the folklore surrounding the “Hippie Fest,” now known as the “Summer of Love,” things were kind of boring at times. You can only do so much milling around and saying “heeeeyyyy maaaannnn…” to people you pass before it gets old. And, by the way, the locals didn’t want us there. Anyway, we headed out to see some of the “touristy” sights around town. We went to what I think today is the Fisherman’s Wharf area, but it wasn’t such a big deal back then. Then we went over and bought some Ghirardelli Chocolate, which I had never heard of. Barb wanted to go to a Giants game at Candlestick park but we found out they weren’t in town, so we spent the afternoon at the ocean. We spent the next few days knocking around the “Human Be-In” scene, watching street performers and musicians, eating with a group called “The Diggers” and somehow thinking we were helping to save the world by being free spirits.

After that, the days kind of meld together. There were parties here and there, rallies here and there and some days with little to do here and there. The smell of pot seemed to permanently hang in the air. We finally went to Candlestick Park later in the month when the Giants were at home. They played St. Louis and won. I thought it was cool to be at Candlestick but that was overridden by the shock of them charging $1 for a crummy hot dog.

Ken Riffle actually had stayed in Bloomington for Postsession. I stayed in touch with my parents by mailing a couple letters to him. Riff would take them out of the big envelope they came in and mail the actual letters to Indy from Bloomington. I called him a couple times and he read their responses. I thought that was a scheme worthy of a CIA operation.

Both money and time were running out. I wanted to stay until June 21, when there would be this giant Solstice party, but that was really pushing it in order to get back to Indy on time. Anyway, I stayed. Barb and I went to the party. It wasn’t much of a party, nor was it very organized. I guess that’s what you would expect from a bunch of free-spirited hippies. Groups were milling around, some dancing, some guitar playing here and there and other activities, but not exactly the wild time I had hoped for, but pleasant just to be with her. We ran into one group off to the side playing a board game called “D-Day.” Seemed out of place for a gathering that was supposed to be about peace and love. Some kids had a giant beach ball with the map of the world painted on it and they were kicking it around. A metaphor for the shape the world was in, I guess. That party is where I saw Herb for the first time since they had dropped me off at the Free Store. He said Swins was there somewhere but I never saw him.

After the party Barb drove me to the bus station and I bought a ticket to Indianapolis. I had about a two hour wait before my bus left, so we strolled around together and shared a goodbye that was way too long and sad.

I had mentioned that I thought the ride out was the longest trip I would ever take. It pales in comparison to that bus ride. I’m not sure how long it took, but by the time I got to Indy I felt like I had been conceived, born and lived my entire life on the thing. I was way too tired to take a bus to Bloomington to continue the charade of being there, so I called Dad and told him I had scored a ride to Indianapolis but the guy who drove me didn’t want to head up to our neighborhood, so Dad had to pick me up on Monument Circle which, at the time was within walking distance from the bus station. I had no money for a cab. Dad never questioned the fact that my only luggage was a stuffed gym bag. The pup tent and sleeping roll were safely tucked away in Barb’s trunk.

I spent the next six weeks or so working at Methodist Hospital, with only one thing on my mind — getting back to Barb. Unfortunately, Dad always took his vacation in late August. This year we had planned a family trip to Expo 67 in Montreal. Try as I might, I couldn’t get out of it. So I found myself heading in the wrong direction for about a thousand miles. Once we got there, Expo 67 turned out to be miserable. There were long lines for everything and unless you wanted to wait for hours you couldn’t get into anything worthwhile. It was a pretty easy task to talk Mom and Dad into cutting things short and heading back home.

The day after we got back I had Dad drive me back down to Bloomington for “Intersession.” (As an aside, one of my other buddies, Larry Rose, knew a guy who worked in the university’s computer department who helped me fake grades for my Post- and Intersession “courses.” I had him give me a B in both. I considered an A, but didn’t want things to be too obvious.)

Dad drove me to Wright Quad and helped me unpack. I had a key to Swinney’s room and told him that’s where I was staying. Dave’s room faced the parking area in front of the quad. I stood at the window and watched as Dad got in his car and left. As soon as he was out of sight, I called the number I had for Barbara and left a message that I was on my way. I took the campus bus to the Bloomington bus station, where I caught a bus to Indianapolis. Flush with money from my summer job, I took a cab to Indianapolis Weir Cook Airport. There was one remaining flight to San Francisco (one stop) and I booked it. I made another call to Barb’s number and gave the girl who answered the times for my flight. About three hours later I was on my first airplane ride — no more long bus rides for me.

Barbara was staying at a place in South San Francisco with some sorority sisters. She met me at the airport. We had dinner and went back to her friends’ place. The next morning we packed our little pup tent and went back to San Francisco.

What we found was not the halcyon Summer of Love people now reminisce about. The city seemed dirty, squalid. There were long lines at the free clinic and the party atmosphere was nearly gone. The utopian scene was dead. After a day or so we decided to leave.

Barbara had heard of a commune north of San Francisco and we decided to go spend some time there. It turned out to be a lot farther than I thought and in the middle of nowhere. They welcomed us when we got there and I thought it would be a nice place to stay but it really didn’t work out. These were nice enough people who eschewed society’s rules, but then made up their own rules. They thought “coupling” was “bourgeois” and frowned on it, so we were outcasts from the start. They had a cabin under construction and let us stay there apart from the group. We pitched in with meals and chores. It worked out OK but it was enough for both of us to learn the commune life was not for us. Some days we would drive back to civilization and see a show or find something else to do. The longer we stayed, the more frequent those trips were. I was a bit surprised to find little kids running around… about a half dozen of them, maybe the oldest was six or so. Sometimes I wonder what happened to them; and also the adults, for that matter.

The commune was basically a mini-farm. They raised their own food and had chickens, but no other livestock. They supplemented their food needs with trips to a grocery in a nearby town. I was never certain where the money came from.

We stayed almost three weeks. I didn’t want to leave but I had to. School had already started. I made a call to Dave and arranged for him to register for me. Barb had decided to stay out of school for that year, a move that she told me drew her father’s ire. I would have done the same but that would have gotten me drafted for sure. I wanted her to come back with me but that presented its own logistics problems — like, I was committed to a men’s dorm and she had no place to stay. She drove me back to San Francisco where I caught my flight home (in those days you could change ticket travel times with very little trouble).

When my plane landed I discovered there was a shuttle to Bloomington, which saved a lot of hassle. I arrived at school the day before the first football game. Swinney had a double room but no roomate, so the stuff I had brought down with Dad was mainly stored on the extra bed. I grabbed that and moved it across the hall into my room. My roomate had been covering for me while I was out gallivanting around, especially when my parents had tried to get hold of me to make plans to come down for the game.

I had no interest in school. All I could think about was getting back together with Barbara. I immediately got a job, because I knew getting to see her would be expensive. We tried to make plans to meet somewhere for my Thanksgiving break, but that didn’t work out. Both of our families had different ideas. My parents nor my Brother for that matter had any idea how deep I was in with her. And I wanted it that way. I really didn’t relish the idea of dropping the bomb that I had been in California most of the summer.

Then a miracle happened. Indiana University, perennial bottom-of-the-barrel football doormat, worst overall football program in the Big 10 with the smallest stadium, won the conference and went to the Rose Bowl. I wrote Barb and told her that, one way or another, I would be in California at the end of December. She agreed to come down. I talked Dad into sending me and I flew out the day after Christmas (my parents thought that was my first flight). I had registered for the official University hotel out there but only spent about five minutes there and we were off on our own. There were all kinds of university activities for the kids from IU and I participated in exactly zero of them. Barb and I did go to one IU open practice and we met some of my friends by the ocean. I scored a ticket for her to go to the Rose Parade but couldn’t get her a ticket for the game. After the parade was the last time I saw her that trip. When the game was over they marched us to busses, straight to the airport and back to Indianapolis. For the record, Indiana lost 14–3. O.J. Simpson played for USC.

Before I left, Barb and I were engaged.

A long distance relationship is hell. Her father talked her into going back to school the next year. We hung on like that for almost two years. On breaks, we would meet in Denver which we considered halfway and it was an easy flight from both cities. In August of ’68 she came out to Bloomington for a couple weeks before school started. I had moved into an apartment and moved down there the minute they opened the apartments for the fall semester students. I never made it to Oregon.

Suddenly it was my senior year in college. The Vietnam War was no closer to being over than it was two years before, and now it was likely in my future.

In March 1969, I was home for a weekend and out playing basketball in the driveway with my brother. It had been raining and we were on slick asphalt. As I tried to drive around him, my left leg went out from under me and I collapsed with a dislocated knee. My mom heard me yell. When she saw what had happened she called her doctor instead of an ambulance. He lived about a mile from our house and was there in nothing flat. It was probably the last house call any doctor ever made but my parents had a great relationship with him. He reset my knee (by far the most painful thing I ever went through). He bandaged it up and said it wouldn’t be necessary to go to an emergency room. Instead he gave us the name of an orthopedic specialist to see. I was absolutely crippled but Vietnam was now off my list.

I graduated in June and immediately got my notice to come in for my draft physical. I couldn’t have passed under any circumstances. Since Barb had laid out a year, she was still in school. I applied for jobs in Oregon but since I wasn’t out there I never even got a nibble. Her father might have been able to help, but he didn’t really know anything about me except to think I was Satan. Eventually I landed a job teaching math at a small high school in Indianapolis. Not what I had trained for; not what I wanted, but people who were good at math were at a premium.

Barb and I were able to get together one more time before my job and her school started. We toyed with eloping. It was a romantic idea but not very practical. She had decided on majoring in education and would be teaching English. She needed her degree. We tried to look down the road until after she graduated and I got a year of teaching under my belt and could save a little money. It was a bumpy road.

One concession Barb’s father made to get her to go back to school was that she could live at her sorority house, even though Barb’s house was only a few miles from the school. Given that, I could call her frequently without risking having her father answer. I called her sometime in late November or early December of 1969 and she told me they were planning a free rock concert near San Francisco. We hadn’t gone to Woodstock, but people were calling this Woodstock West. I told my family I was going to IU for the weekend, booked a flight and I was on my way.

“Woodstock West” turned out to be the infamous Altamont Concert. I may write another post about it but suffice it to say it was the most ill-conceived, ill-managed mess of an event in the history of mankind.

She picked me up at the airport and immediately told me the concert had been canceled. Plan B was a quiet weekend in San Francisco. The next morning we drove to Sausalito. Sometime around mid-morning she said we should go to Reyes Point. As we got in the car the radio was announcing that the concert was back on. It was about a 2 hour drive and we figured we could make it, so we headed out.

Traffic wasn’t too bad since most people had gone in the night before (apparently they knew at that time the concert was not canceled). Parking was a nightmare. By the time we got there all the parking at the event was filled up and people were just pulling off the side of the road and leaving their cars. We did the same and hiked in. I would guess it was about two miles. We found a spot at the absolute back of the crowd, which was massive.

This was the concert where the Rolling Stones had hired the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang for security… a major tactical error. The Angels killed some guy who was brandishing a gun up by the stage. We, of course could see none of this. About all we saw was the helicopter that took him to the hospital.

We left after it was over. A lot of people stayed for the night but it was cold and we were not prepared to sleep on the ground in chilly weather. Instead we found a motel with a vacancy about halfway back to SF.

I’ve been to a few rock concerts before and since, but that was the worst. And things didn’t get any better. That’s when Barb and I called off the engagement. Long distance hadn’t worked and neither of us was in a position to move. Sunday morning she drove me to the airport for my flight. It was the last time I ever saw her or even heard from her. I’ve tried on occasion to “Google” her or find her in some other way, but the trail has gone cold. I figure she got married, changed her name and unless I knew what it was, I’m at a dead end. I know her father’s name was Robert. He’s probably dead by now. Maybe my one hope is to find his obituary and get the names of his survivors. It’s not online… I’ve looked.

Barbara Jean McGee was at one point the love of my life. I had her letters and pictures hidden away in a cardboard box in the basement of our house. In 1993, our basement flooded and they were destroyed. A couple trinkets I keep in my office at home are all I have left her. She didn’t like to be called Barbara. You could get away with Barb or sometimes Bobbi. Sometimes I came up with B.J. or even Beeje. She was a member of a sorority, Zeta Tau Alpha I think. I thought that was a little out of place for the free spirit inside her. Those were the gals she was staying with when I went back to San Francisco. We also went to one of their events when she came to IU.

After we broke up I finished my year teaching. In the fall I went back to graduate school and started dating another girl named Barbara. That didn’t last too long and I think part of it was the fact she had the same name. It was just too much of a reminder.

What a trip it was. In 1967, I was in California three times and Montreal once. That’s when it all started. In 1969, I was at the worst rock concert in the history of mankind. Perhaps that was a fitting way for it all to end.

Epilog: About a year or so after we broke things off, I was in my dorm room back at IU. I had the radio on and the disc jockey said, “…and here’s a new one from Janis Joplin. It’s a song called Me and Bobby McGee.” I almost cried.