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Woodstock Baby, are You Out There?
You know I love a nice, juicy, out-of-hospital birth. But I’m not sure where I stand on live, in-concert labor and deliveries. Not that giving birth among a half a million people at a large, outdoor, three-day-long hippie concert is all that common.
In fact, births at Woodstock — long one of the many free-love stories told of the event — may never have happened.
The supposed Woodstock baby (or babies — estimates range from zero to four births at the famed 1969 concert on a farm in Sullivan County, New York) turns 40 in August and people are starting to ask again. No one has ever credibly stepped forward and said, “I’m a Woodstock Baby.”
But there is some evidence there were births. From the AP:
Singer John Sebastian is captured on film announcing that some cat’s old lady just had a baby, a kid destined to be far out (note from blogger: maybe he was talking about a, um, cat?). A couple of surviving eyewitnesses say there were births (uhhh, drugs?). The concert’s medical director told reporters at the scene there were two births: one at a local hospital after the mother was flown out by helicopter; the other in a car caught in the epic traffic jam outside the site crowded with more than 400,000 people. (Yes, this I believe. So, medivac’d Woodstock Baby/ies, if you’re reading this, please write in!)
Eliot Tiber, the subject of a new Ang Lee film, “Taking Woodstock,” says he helped deliver a baby that weekend.
AP:
Tiber, who has a reputation for being a raconteur, said the woman gave birth at his parent’s hotel near the site, which — like the entire area that weekend — was mobbed. The woman wore a leather jacket, came in on a motorcycle and just flopped down.
“I see she’s starting to give birth,” Tiber recalled. “It was like the quote from ‘Gone With the Wind’: ‘I don’t know nothing about birthing no babies, Miss Scarlett’ (cringe!)… I was screaming, just screaming. Everybody was standing around stoned saying, ‘Yeah, groovy!’ (gah!) They thought it was cool.”
Tiber said the baby was taken away, though the mother came by in a cab a few weeks later with her baby in a blanket. He didn’t get any names. He never heard from them again.
Of course he didn’t. Of course, he didn’t.
Here’s a trailer for the movie.
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9 Comments
[...] Woodstock Baby, are You Out There? [...]
Unaccompanied Minors Easy Targets for Predators | Strollerderby commented on Jul 22 09 at 10:10 am[...] Woodstock baby would be forty years old next weekend if she or he were real. But there’s a much sadder story of kids who won’t [...]
Eight (Or Four) Babies Lost at Woodstock | Strollerderby commented on Aug 07 09 at 7:50 pmAli commented on Jul 21 09 at 1:10 pmWhy do people worship that stupid concert? It is considered the end of the Summer of Love and the beginning of a huge drug problem in our country. Plus the music sucked.
jeannesager commented on Jul 21 09 at 1:23 pmOooh, Ali, I’m going to have to disagree with you there. As someone who grew up in the middle of the hero worship (I live 10 minutes from the site), I’ll say the music “sucking” is very subjective. I happen to love that kind of music as it was the stuff my parents played to me growing up.
And while there were definitely drugs at that concert, drugs were widespread across America waaaaaay before Woodstock. What’s more, the drug problems that are rampant these days are vastly different from the drug problems at the festival – these were happy hippies getting high. They weren’t hardcore crack heads bashing people’s brains in.
Mistress_Scorpio commented on Jul 21 09 at 1:53 pmJeanne… I live 5 minutes from the site. Are we neighbors???
Mistress_Scorpio commented on Jul 21 09 at 1:55 pmNope, nope, nope. I live near the Woodstock ’94 site.
jeannesager commented on Jul 21 09 at 2:35 pmHa – you’re in upstate NY too? I’m 10 minutes from the original site, but they had one here in 94 too.
Bluster commented on Jul 21 09 at 3:08 pmHey Ali!!
Drug use began in this troubled land when native Americans discovered peyote. Opium flooded the streets of San Francisco as it grew from Buena Vista. Cocaine and morphine were the entertainment of choice when the nineteenth century met the twentieth century. Woodstock was just a brief interlude in the long and troublesome days of the happy crowds.
Ali commented on Jul 21 09 at 9:16 pmHippies getting high got hooked on heroin and became junkies. It wasnt all smoking grass you know. People ruined their lives on LSD, cocaine, heroin, pills. Not too groovy. There was a free clinic in the Haight-Ashbury are just for the junkies wandering in from the hippy joints. Many of them died young or had life long addictions. Everyone I know who think Woodstock was some magical event is too young to remember it. I remember the 60′s and 70-’s very well and it was a sad time.
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