Spitball Army

from Woodstock: The Oral History, by Joel Makower:

Abbie Hoffman:  It looked like five thousand people on bad acid trips coming down the road doing the St. Vitus’ Day dance, half-naked, stoned, and they all came in to the trip tents.  They got in the farm.  And Wavy [festival host and M.C. Wavy Gravy], he was quick and good.  He just said, “Jump on them all, everybody.”  They have a term for it – I don’t know, some kind of happiness hill.  And everyone was just in these human piles and the ones that were freaking out and the ones that were giggling were just like mixed up like a whole can of worms.  And I’ll tell you, it worked.  I tell you it was damn good and it worked and no one got hurt and everyone got out of it in one piece.  But just seeing that mound of hundreds of people piling in and him being so good and setting a kind of tone that was jovial and “We’re having a good time” was exactly right because the wrong vibes, as we used to call it, could have sent that thing into a violent riot like that.  Woodstock could have turned into the tragedy that Rockefeller had envisioned so easily.  I mean, it could have been five hundred to a thousand dead just from panicking, from bad information or, you know, “Someone’s got a knife, run!”  And you know, you could have seen thirty thousand people start to stampede up a hill, I mean very bad.  Especially in the nighttime.