When Woodstock Came to Texas

Poster for the Texas International Pop Festival,
August 30 - September 1, 1969.

It may surprise some of my truckbuddies to learn that Texas had its own hippie rock concert on Labor Day weekend, 1969, just a couple of weeks after the famous one in New York state.  I'm surprised, too:  I never heard of it, and neither did M.P.  We were both still in high school, far away from Dallas. And I was too square to care; still am. But as matter of social history in my own lifetime, it was interesting to stumble upon these news videos and reminiscences of the event, which some surviving participants say was life-changing.  I guess you had to be there.

First, an official video from the City of Lewisville, a little ways north of Dallas proper, where the festival was held in a large open field next to Interstate 35.  The site has been heavily redeveloped since then (see maps).  The promoter who first appears at 1:36 is a son of the founder of the Six Flags theme parks, Angus Wynn, Jr.

It says a lot about small-town Texas that the upright, God-fearing citizenry at the time were outraged, not by the long hair, rock music, and drugs, but by the all nekkid bodies skinny-dipping in the nearby lake in broad daylight!  The locals knew the kids were naked because they were out there in their motorboats, intently scrutinizing all that indecency through binoculars.

Your Head Trucker at the time dressed more like the newsman in the next clip, and remained so for several years until I grew a beard. I got myself wound up in a very strict fundamentalist church from age 14 to 21, so I suppressed all "unholy" desires for a long time.

Notice what he said about "it's hard to know what to call these young people" - not everyone adopted the hippie look all at once. But as a bit of fashion history, please notice that most of the guys, with few exceptions, are still wearing straight-leg pants. Flares and bell-bottoms for men did not arrive in the South until later that fall. I know, I was there. But what I did like about the whole counterculture thing was the long hair and OMG the beards! Though for me, it wasn't the rebelliousness that turned me on, just a romantic liking for the flowing locks of the Cavalier period, and the virile beards of the Elizabethans. Still works for me, big time.

Here are some more clips of various attendees, most of them "weekend hippies" whose hair and clothes were still within the limits of respectability. In the next few years, what was strange and different in 1969 became standard fashions.  That's how the fashion industry works.  Just a couple of years after this event, I was sitting in a goverment class when the instructor asked the thought question, "What is a hippie?"  We all looked at each other mutely - "hippie" had become "normal."  All young people more or less dressed that way.

It's poignant to hear the earnest young folks in these clips spout all those la-de-da sentiments of peace, love, and joy: "just be yourself, do what you want to do - then life will be wonderful, and people will love you for it." Nope. It just doesn't work that way. But they surely found that out later on. 

This video opens with a crotch shot that proves more than words ever could that rock and roll IS sex, and vice versa

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