Peace, love, music, mud and memories

On the morning of Aug. 15, Steven Katz of Jericho awoke with a half dozen buddies in a rented U-Haul truck on a grass slope at Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, N.Y. Opening the rear doors at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival, "we were shocked to see the entire hill filled with vans and cars, not a vacant spot to be found," Katz recalled. "The rest is history."

Woodstock, a three-day music festival, featured more than 30 well-known musical acts, playing to nearly 500,000 people - more than twice the number expected. Quite a few of the young Long Islanders who attended lied to their parents about where they were going.

"We were closet flower children and want-to-be hippies who embraced the music of an era, but remained hidden due to our conservative Long Island middle class upbringing, social status or parental control," said Tom Licari, the Chaminade student who cut his long hair in exchange for his parents' permission to attend.

Despite fears of riots and muggings, Woodstock was mostly a peaceful event. The National Guard even used helicopters to drop food and water to the crowd. Police arrested about 100 concertgoers on drug charges.

The rains drenched the crowd, but most didn't mind at all.

One day of music was better than the next, they said, from Richie Havens on Friday to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Blood, Sweat and Tears Sunday.

"I was diggin' it, man, it was unbelievable," said Daniel McBride of Farmingdale, who attended the festival three days after returning from Vietnam.

Patricia Canigiani, then 27 and a private nurse in Bethpage, watched TV footage of Woodstock with a decidedly more critical eye. To her it was less a cultural event than an opportunity for the nation's young to get together and use illegal drugs.

After Woodstock ended, the nursing agency dispatched Canigiani to what is now called Nassau University Medical Center. She was to care for a 17-year-old girl who took something toxic at Woodstock - apparently LSD laced with arsenic.

"A beautiful girl," Canigiani said. "Her parents and aunts and uncles were on a 24-hour vigil, crying in the hallway."

She died a few days later.

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