“Are you a Deadhead?”

I was buying a gift for my friend’s birthday in Woodstock, N.Y., earlier this year. The shop carried merchandise mostly from acts that played the original festival in 1969: Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Janis Joplin. I found a pair of socks covered in multicolored bears, either dancing or marching, I couldn’t tell. The cashier seemed excited by my choice, but I had to tell him no, I’m not a Deadhead. I braced myself, but he didn’t accost me. Maybe Deadheads aren’t as virulent as other groups of superfans. It probably helped that the dude was smoking pot at work.

It was my first time in Woodstock. I found out when we got there that the festival was held almost two hours away, closer to Scranton, Pa. Looking around at the town’s sidewalks, it seemed like I wasn’t the only person who missed the memo. There were farmers, hippies and city dwellers on vacation, many wearing their nostalgia quite literally. There was what I can only assume was a bachelor party of men with tie-dye bandannas around their heads, moving in a pack. I wondered what about Woodstock brought them to this small town rather than anywhere else.

I had one of those bandannas back in fifth grade. I wore it on “hippie day” during spirit week, along with bell bottoms, big tinted glasses and a crochet vest. Students put up two fingers on each hand and said “peace and love” in the halls all day, heavy-lidded and speaking slowly. We were acting high before any of us knew that there were drugs other than the ones doctors gave us when we were sick. These were behaviors we gleaned from television characters and veiled anecdotes from our parents.