Pocono News Section

One Tank Trip: A Woodstock Museum

One Tank Trip: A Woodstock Museum - Friday, June 13, 2008 at 5:40PM EST

Reported by: Jeff Chirico
Friday, Jun 13, 2008 @ 05:40pm EST
BETHEL, NEW YORK --This month a new museum opened commemorating the historic Woodstock Festival of 1969. For those looking for things to do that are close to home, this may be just the thing. Our Jeff Chirico continues his summer series of One Tank Trips.

Talk about trips. There were quite a few of them that August weekend 39 years ago. And despite it's name, the Woodstock Festival didn't happen in Woodstock at all. A farm in Bethel, New York --played host to the historic weekend...that's just 15 minutes from Wayne County.

It ended a decade of counterculture. Billed as a 3-day festival of peace and love, Woodstock drew a half million hippies to rural Bethel, New York. “We were all here for the same reason. To change the world." The same town now honors that historic weekend in the Museum at Bethel Woods.

Wade Lawrence
Museum director

"I like to think of Woodstock as the exclamation point for the 1960s."

The exhibits begin with that decade's unrest. A generation galvanized by civil rights, women's rights, the war in Vietnam peacefully rebelled here. "It wasn't just about the music it was also an expression of freedom." You can watch films inside this replica love bus. Photos and artifacts offer vivid insight into the three day event. It plays down the sex and drugs and plays up Woodstock's historical significance.

These notes are the 1969 version of text messages. "They would leave notes and messages tacked to trees or information board. ‘To Cindy with black hair and a sister. Please call."

"I can still see or smell, taste it sometimes then when that happens I lose it just like that."

Duke Devlin's the hippie who never left. Now he's a tour guide -and proud to have been part of the festival.

“You couldn't help but get caught up in the community that was here. We were all summoned here it seems. All here for the same reason."

I'm standing on what was the main stage surrounded by alfalfa fields. Those who were here say there were humans for as far as the eye could see.

Sharon Snyder
Woodstock attendee

"It was overwhelming to see so many people in one place."

“Everybody had a different experience but I think the common thread was the peace and love everyone experienced."

It took three quarters of a tank of gas to get from our Wilkes-Barre studio to Bethel and back.