March 4, 2020

Woodstock

I should tell you right from the start I was at Woodstock. I mention it in the same way a veteran from a different generation will tell you he landed on the beach in Normandy. Course. I don’t know all that much about D-Day, but I would imagine there was a hell of a lot more drugs and nudity up at Max Yasgur’s farm.

I should probably also tell you I was only 10 at the time.

Still, it was the defining point in my adolescence.

My parents weren’t really hippies. They did own a station wagon though, which is why they were elected, or rather cajoled, to drive their band of pot-smoking, bead-wearing, hair-flowing comrades to upstate New York from Montreal in that ephemeral summer of love.

I came ’cause they couldn’t find a babysitter.

Nowadays, the legions of people who claim to have attended the festival have swelled to the tens of millions. People wear it proudly like a badge of honour. I guess when you say something enough times, you eventually begin to believe it. Anyway, it’s not up to me to judge.

Thing is, I was there.

And, I remember the music.

Not a lot of people who were there remember the music.

It’s a good thing they made the movie. Gave everybody who was there a chance to finally appreciate the great sounds that filtered through the rain.

I especially remember Country Joe and The Fish’s classic F*U*C*K* chant.

Hey, I was 10.

Speaking of the movie. If you look closely, you can sort of see the back of my head in the mud-sliding scenes. My mom always cries when she watches that part. I’m not really sure it is me, but watching the movie has become one of my standard go-to third date moves.

Woodstock has that magic effect on people.

Having said that, I should also add that Woodstock doesn’t really have anything to do with this story. It was only to establish a point of reference. To let the reader know what kind of person I am.

Rock ’n’ roll, you see, is in my blood.

I caught all the shows at the Forum. The Stones, Dylan, Frampton, Santana. I was even at Alice Cooper’s Welcome to my Nightmare tour.

I never said that I was graced with great taste.

I was a cool kid and cooler teenager.

Travelled all over to see The Dead and later, The Boss. I’ve ingested hash brownies from Boston to Seattle and have unhooked my fair share of bras in the backs of buses.

But, to invoke the classic words of Arlo Guthrie, that’s not what I came to talk to you about.

I came to tell you about the night I took my five-year-old son, Noah, to see Raffi.

Raffi, as some of you might know, is a beloved children’s song entertainer. His tunes, Baby Beluga, Apples and Bananas, Down by the Bay, all greatest hits, were an insufferable staple in both the house and car. The kids loved him. He was playing a Saturday afternoon concert at Massey Hall and I had lost the rock paper scissor contest with my wife as to which of us were going to go. To be fair to my wife, she agreed to best two out of three, best three out of five, and best four out of seven. I lost all three. So I was going to see him. Noah was excited. Me not so much.

It was mid-November and the first snow storm of the season had covered the city like a queen-size down duvet. Our white four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee easily traversed through the slick side streets, the wiper flicking off the oversize flakes methodically before they could make a lasting impression on the windshield. Noah had his Leafs hat pulled down to just above his eyebrows as he fidgeted with the seatbelt. The hat had been part of a birthday present deal. I had to throw in the gloves. The kid was a shrewd negotiator.

Negotiations were second nature to my kids. It was the way we conducted business in the household. Recently, we had just completed week-long talks in order to determine new bedtimes. Noah had argued, convincingly, that as a five year old, his bedtime should move up from 8:00 to 8:10. I had been involved in the first part of the negotiation while the second team, namely my wife, had worked out the finer details.

8:10, I later found out, was not lights-out time. That would come only after the requisite bedtime story. I knew that next year he would be holding out for the Letterman Show. His older sister, Tammy, in the meantime, had taken advantage of our weaker position to renegotiate an extension on her existing contract.

“We’ll discuss it on your birthday,” I had ventured.

“Now,” she pouted, “it’s not fair.”

We stood firm. The next morning, she proposed an extra minute as “a show of good faith.”

This was my eight-year-old daughter talking.

I gave her the minute.

And now I was taking Noah to a concert.

His first concert.

Raffi.

Life as a parent is a series of firsts: first steps, first words, first time that thermometer hits 102. You record each event carefully and diligently, whether by camera, video recorder, or diary. Some events remain forever etched in your brain. Like the time Noah and Tammy walked into our room, hand in hand, and demanded some answers about sex. They wanted to know, in particular, about their own parents.

“We know how you do it,” stated Tammy, the know-it-all ringleader.

“Yeah,” echoed Noah, “we just want to know why you do it.” And with that they turned in tandem and walked back out of the room.

I remember my wife turning to me and saying, “The real question should be when do we find the time to do it.”

Downtown was a zoo. I circled and circled looking for a spot. I finally found a parking lot near Maple Leaf Gardens.

$20 for parking. The whores on Church Street don’t always come in the form of prostitutes.

I handed the attendant my 20 and asked why it was so busy on a Saturday afternoon.

He pocketed the bill and pointed to the arena.

“The great one is in town.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Was it some sort of preacher?

“The Great One?”

He looked at me like I was from Mars.

“Gretzky man. The Kings are in town.”

And then I remembered. The Leafs were playing a rare Saturday afternoon game in order to accommodate the Kings’ flight back to Los Angeles. Some sort of scheduling conflict.

Gretzky.

Noah loved the Leafs, but my wife and I decided he was too young to go to a live game. Especially at those prices. Besides, he seemed perfectly content to watch the first period on TV.

But here we were in front of the Gardens. Only minutes away from a crowd full of kids and moms, the other dads clearly more proficient at rock paper scissors than I, singing Baby Beluga at the top of their lungs. I had already paid for the tickets. Had them in my wallet. Great seats. Only a few rows away from Raffi.

But Gretzky.

I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

Besides, the parking lot was teaming with ticket vendors.

The first number I was quoted was the price of a small car. There was no way. We started walking away. Not as a negotiating tactic. I just knew there was no way. And Noah had not really caught on to what I was doing, so he wouldn’t be disappointed. As we walked away, the seller called out, “I have a cheap pair if you don't mind sitting in the gods.”

His cheap seats were still crazy expensive. On the other hand, I wasn't thrilled my son would one day have to tell people, especially girls, his first concert had been Raffi.

I mean really.

And so Noah, wide-eyed and a little confused, and I, soon found ourselves sitting on the top row in the top section of Maple Leaf Gardens.

“Are you sure this is okay, Noah? We are going to miss Raffi.”

He looked up at me with a look of pity and bemusement he and his sister would soon perfect and said, “Dad, it’s Gretzky.”

Even where we sat, the excitement was palpable.

The players were clearly affected by the buzz, because in the middle of the first period, a fight broke out. It was a classic bench-clearing brawl. Grown men were throwing fists and exchanging unpleasantries. I spent the first few minutes of the fight explaining to my son that fighting took away from the game. That it was not a good thing.

“I know that, Daddy,” he said without turning his head from the action. Even from where we were sitting, we could hear one Leaf tell an opposing King player to commit an act which was physically impossible.

“He shouldn’t say that word,” he said before I could launch into my lecture.

“Sometimes people say things they shouldn’t when they are very angry,” I said.

“Like you do sometimes,” he replied without a trace of irony.

He had me there.

At the end of the second period, the score was Leafs 3, Kings 3, Noah 1 hotdog, 1 root beer, 1 pennant, 1 keychain, 1 candy apple, and 1 popcorn.

We were into the third period when he turned to me and said his stomach hurt. We had already made two trips to the bathroom and I suggested a third. The look on his face told me that he wasn’t going to make it. I reached for the half-empty popcorn box just in time for my son to throw up in it.

My reflexes, even then, were still sharp.

I cleaned him up and we made our way through the building to the street a few minutes before the end of the game.

We rode home in silence, he was asleep and I was thinking of what I would tell my wife, and I carried him into the house and up to his room. I kissed him goodnight and was out the door when he called me back.

“Daddy.”

“Yes, Noah.”

“I’m mad at you.”

“Because I made you miss the end of the game.”

“No, ’cause I didn’t get to finish my popcorn.” And with that, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

I suffer from insomnia.

I lie awake at night and fall asleep in meetings the next day.

Over the years, I’ve mastered the art of slipping out of bed in the middle of the night without disturbing my wife.

At 3:00 am, I tiptoed downstairs and poured myself a bowl of cereal, in the dark. I had picked out one of the kid’s sugarcoated ones and went into the den. I scanned my video collection before finding the one I wanted.

I ate Count Chocula in the dark and watched Woodstock with the sound turned down low.

If you look carefully, you can sort of make out the back of my head in that famous water-sliding scene.

Maybe next week I’ll take the kids to see Jethro Tull at the Gardens.

The end.