Get Me There On Time

Traveling, whether it be to take the kids to Dizzy World, or a romantic drive along Skyline Drive, or a business trip to Kankakee for a big meeting on the United Cheese account, takes planning.

As I understand it, if you wish to fly out of Baltimore on, say, a Saturday morning, you need to be at the airport by, say, Thursday afternoon, with your shoes and socks off, and ready to submit to an MRI by the Federal Air Traffic Armed Security Service.

Trains, boats, cars: all offer exorbitant price at tremendous inconvenience for the frustrated triptaker who is just about to have that inexorable feeling of sanity ebbing away. 

But it was a lot easier to get around in 1969, and for you who never heard of the The Woodstock Music & Art Fair, held that summer in a muddy field in upstate New York, let's just say that it was the greatest and most memorable of the three-day music expos held in those days, and many groups who were just starting out - such as Crosby, Stills and Nash, Sha Na Na, and Santana - took the exposure they received before 500,000 in a cow pasture, and the movie that followed, and became legendary acts.

And then there was Iron Butterfly, whose one and only entry in what they hoped would be a career filled with hits was the interminable psychopop classic "In A Gadda Da Vida" (Latin for "Baby, I I Love Your Granola"). Woodstock would be a touchy subject among the members of Iron Butterfly, if anyone has a number to reach any of them, because they failed to take the stage because they failed to take a plane on time. Perhaps they should have taken a stagecoach.

What happened was a clear lack of advance planning. IB was supposed to play at Woodstock on Sunday afternoon, but failed to fly to New York City on time, and then had no way to get upstate. Driving was out, as anyone who's ever heard Arlo Guthrie swoon, "The New York State Thruway's CLOSED, man!" can attest. So their road manager called the promoters from LaGuardia Airport and demanded a helicopter be chartered to fly his musicians to the site and right back to the city.

Woodstock Production Coordinator John Morris is said to have replied to the manager in the form of a telegram reading: "For reasons I can't go into / Until you are here / Clarifying your situation / Knowing you are having problems / You will have to find / Other transportation / Unless you plan not to come."

This form of writing is called an acrostic; that's where the first letter of each word in a passage summarizes the intent of the message.

It is not known how long the Iron Butterflies hung around LaGuardia waiting for their connection to their next destination, a little town called Oblivion.