Peace, Love and Music

Kathy and I went out to eat tonight with our friends, Jerry and Debby. As I usually do I found out a little about our waitress. She is attending law school at Mercer. She said her parents were former hippies and actually met at a Jimi Hendrix concert.

I wondered if they met in Byron, Georgia in the summer of 1970.

Byron is located in Peach County about 25 minutes from Reynolds and about 15 minutes from Macon. On July 4, 1970 the Byron Police Department consisted of one police officer, two dispatchers and a part-timer.

Also on July 4, 1970 around 500,000 people gathered next to the Middle Georgia Raceway in a pecan grove in Byron for the 2nd Atlanta International Pop Festival. That is not a typo. Five hundred thousand people with the temperature over 100 degrees resulted in more than a few skinny dippers in the Echeconnee Creek. They said they ran the water moccasins right out of there.

Fifty cent bags of ice sold for five dollars.

Traffic was backed up 90 miles on I-75 with people trying to get to it.

And one police officer, two dispatchers and a part-timer making sure everyone obeyed the law. No arrests were made that weekend.

But there was plenty of Kool-Aid mixed with a little LSD consumed.

I was 15 years old going on 16. No way mama would let me attend the festival but I did ride through a couple of times in a pickup truck. People would jump in the back of the truck when we rode through. Nothing you could do about it either.

I couldn't believe what I saw.

A once in a life-time event for sure.

Most had their clothes on. Some did not. Nobody wore shoes. And there was not a bra within 100 miles of the place.

The festival was promoted as “three days of peace, love and music,” just as Woodstock had been the summer before.

The band line-up was not too shabby either. The Allman Brothers, B.B. King, Jethro Tull, John Sebastian, The Day After, Johnny Winter, Grand Funk Railroad and of course Jimi Hendrix were all there. And there were others.

Hendrix died of a drug overdose 10 weeks later.

Peace, love and music.

I couldn’t help but wonder tonight if the love affair that would later produce our law student waitress began at the Atlanta International Pop Festival in Byron in 1970.

If it didn’t, they sure did miss a good chance.