This past weekend, Aug. 15 to 18, was the 56th anniversary of the original Woodstock, famously held on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in the small town of Bethel, N.Y., in 1969.

I’m not going to be one of perhaps millions of people who claim they were there but weren’t. I had wanted to be, but I was 14. A 15-year-old friend and I had told our parents we were going camping in the Adirondacks near our homes, but we were planning on hitchhiking down to Bethel instead.