INTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER - When pre-law student Glen and his pretty cousin Betsy herself a pre-med student attend a music festival near Bennington Vermont as part of a group of six, they hope it will be like the Woodstock festival of 1969 two years earlier, both of which they were too young to attend at the time. But poor organization, anti-social behavior and bad weather turn the event into a living nightmare, and Betsy and Glen are like fish out of water in the chaos. And things go from bad to worse as Betsy and Glen find out the hard way of the dangers that lurk in Vermont's dark forests near the Long Trail and Glastonbury Mountain...
Please note this story involves themes with female characters using the toilet and having their periods including menstrual sex, so if these themes are not your thing this story may not be for you. Otherwise, enjoy your trip back in time to the early 1970s and be sure to rate and comment. All characters and events are fictional with similarity to real person's living or dead coincidental and unintentional, and only characters 18 and over are in any sexual situations.
*
RHODE ISLAND, USA, SUMMER 1971
In the two years since it had been held, the Woodstock festival in summer 1969 had reached legendary status, making myself, my older sister Susan and our cousin Betsy envious of those who were able to attend the event. The reason we did not attend was a simple one, at the time we were minors and had no means of attending Woodstock and our parents if the subject mooted would have said 'no way', but now we were young adults attending college we were able to attend an event we hoped would be just as good.
The music festival we were attending had a simple enough name, 'The New England Rock and Pop Music Festival'. It was to be held in Vermont, in some fields near the forests of the Glastonbury Mountains, Bennington the largest town in the region. It had an amazing line-up of bands and solo artists in a variety of different music genres, a good number of up and coming groups and singers in support/lead-in acts and promised great entertainment too in addition to a variety of music.
Held over the Labor Day long weekend, the festival would start late on Friday afternoon, run all through Saturday and Sunday, and finish up around noon on Monday, festival goers then returning home during the afternoon and back to reality on Tuesday. The whole thing sounded awesome, I had been counting the days for weeks and now it was finally here.
I stood with my cousin Warren at the front of the house where he lived with his parents and older sister Betsy, our things packed for a long weekend away and waiting for Betsy to appear and our ride to turn up. Friday morning had dawned bright and sunny not only on Rhode Island but according to the weather forecast, all across the North Eastern Seaboard from Maine down to Maryland.
"So Warren, I bet you're looking forward to seeing all these musicians in person this weekend?" I asked my cousin.
Warren shrugged and adjusted his thick-lensed glasses. "Yeah, I guess."
My skinny bespectacled cousin could not have sounded less enthused had he tried. Warren, with his blonde hair neatly parted wore a beige colored shirt and slacks of a similar color could not have looked more out of place attending a music festival. And with Warren having just graduated high school in June and starting his freshman year of college in coming weeks, why would my aunt and uncle allow him to attend such an event, much less insist that he attend?
Truth was, despite his square and studious manner and seemingly responsible persona Warren had been driving my Aunt Martha and Uncle Larry nuts this summer, and indeed for some time before that. Growing up, our families had been very much into music but Warren had the most talent of all of us. He could actually read music before he started elementary school, could turn his hand to any type of musical instrument. If older sister Betsy was playing the piano or practicing with her clarinet, Warren could repeat what she had played straight afterwards without looking at the sheet music.
Unfortunately, his musical talent had gone to his head during his later years of high school and Warren had become an insufferable music snob. All of us had been involved in the music extracurricular activities at high school - band, glee club and as the chorus for the drama kids putting on the school's musical - but the older yet far less wiser Warren thought his talent put him above this, and expressing such opinions served to make him rather unpopular with the other musical kids not to mention the teachers. He would even go so far as to make comments about songs by well-known musical artists - even the Beatles and Elvis Presley - he did not care much for, saying how he could have rearranged the vocals and used different keys and pitches to make the songs better.
Given Warren was such a square anyway, he wasn't exactly going to be spoiled for choice in places to sit for lunch, so after being frozen out by the music/drama kids Warren was banished to the worst table to sit at school for lunch, the table where the special education students sat. Not that he interacted with them, he spent his time working on operas and classical musical concertos which he was composing.
With high school over for Warren he no longer had the problem of where to sit for lunch - and I think everyone was glad to see the back of him - but problems had followed him out of school and into summer. At church Warren had failed to win friends and influence people when he gave the organist who had been performing this role since before the Second World War tips on improving her playing, which was not well received.
Even less well received was Warren intruding upon the Sunday school class, advising the women running it that they were teaching the kids to sing in the wrong key. And not content with simply being a busy-body he took it upon himself to take over the piano playing from the lady who undertook this role every Sunday.
Having seen the younger and less ego-centric Warren's amazing musical talents, the owners of our town's major music store had given him a part-time job as a sales clerk a few nights after school, on Saturday mornings and during school holidays. It should have been Warren's dream job, and at first it was just this, but then the same problems that caused Warren issues at school, home and church soon followed him to work.
Warren probably should have realized that the tall man in a cowboy hat, jeans and boots only liked two types of music, one being Country and the other Western. With the cowboy seemingly easy to please and requesting records by any of Glen Campbell, John Denver, Charley Pride or the late Jim Reeves, Warren should have sold him any number of these. He should not have attempted to sell him Wagner and Mozart records, and losing the cowboy's business in the process.
My cousin also shouldn't have tried to persuade the teenage girls who were interested in purchasing one of the new Sonny and Cher cassettes that their money would be better spent on records of various operas. And most definitely he should not have said to the two women who entered the shop to buy some bubblegum pop records as birthday gifts for their middle school aged daughters that it was understandable that the daughters at their ages would have such terrible taste in music, but that the mothers should not be encouraging it and should buy some better records or cassettes of classical music for the girls.
Obviously too many mistakes like this costing the shop valuable sales caused them to terminate his employment, and despite both Uncle Larry and Aunt Martha presenting Warren with a newspaper and looking through the 'Help Wanted' ads for a summer job before college, my cousin had not done so and spent all his time indoors down in the basement, composing concertos and operas. No wonder he was so pale for late summer. Perhaps starting at college where he would study to become an accountant (more my aunt and uncle's decision than that of their son) would teach Warren the error of his ways especially why he ended up fired from the music shop?
Warren's journey to learning the errors of his ways seemed to be getting off to a slow start today, as I saw him open his backpack and adjust the items within. These were his notes on the operas and concertos he was working on, and several books. One was about appreciating opera in the present day, a second was an analysis of various European classical composers of the 1700s and 1800s, and the third was a biography of Handel.
I shook my head, but did not comment. I didn't need to. From behind us came a young female voice, "Warren, are you seriously taking those books with you to the festival? Is your number one goal in life to get beaten up?"
Both Warren and I turned around to see 19-year-old Betsy walking down the front path, carrying a backpack of her own things she would need for the weekend which I presumed did not include books about classical music or opera.
