Three Days of Peace, Love, and The Wheels on the Bus
When the truth is found
To be lies
And all the joy
Within you dies
Don’t you want somebody to love
Don’t you need somebody to love
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love
You better find somebody to love, love
(from Somebody To Love, written by Darby Slick, recorded by the Jefferson Airplane)
According to the Woodstock Wiki the band Jefferson Airplane was scheduled to be the headliner on Saturday evening but actually hit the stage on Sunday morning around 8 am. Somebody to Love was the second song of their set list that morning.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked Jefferson Airplane’s version No. 274 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It’s also one of my all time favorites.
We were traveling this weekend.
My “This Day in History” email that I received the day we left, August 15 from the History Channel, reminded me that in 1969 on this day the Woodstock Music Festival opened. Three days of peace, love, and music.
I was not at Woodstock.
I was only 13 years old.
I recalled part of my experiences from that summer of ‘69 in my post Bell Bottom Blues Revisited.
But now it is fifty years later and 2019.
And the other This Day in History for me this weekend was that it was on this same weekend of the month in February that I last saw my two little guys in Florida. Six months is way too long to not see your grandchildren.
And I was reminded of that very clearly.
“Pop Pop I haven’t seen you in years and years,” said Christian very dramatically on Friday on our way to a park.
Christian is my four year old grandson, and man he is killing me…
“It’s been forever!” he said, rubbing it in a little more.
He was right, it did seem like forever.
Our Woodstock anniversary weekend didn’t include anything even close to Jefferson Airplane or Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner. It was Wheels on the Bus on You Tube, water slides, playgrounds at the park, ice cream, swinging in the back yard, cookies, and walks to Publix for Lunchables, and playing Disney Bus.
And now that our three days of peace, love, Wheels on the Bus, and grandchildren are over and Mimi and Pop Pop are waiting at the airport to return to Virginia, it’s nice that we had somebody to love.
The next time though we can’t wait “years and years.”