Bull Island Rock Festival (eBook)

Chapter 3

I saw on the local TV news that the location of the big rock festival had been changed from Chandler, Indiana, to a place about 45 miles from Chandler, near the Wabash river, called “Bull Island”. They had been showing the traffic back-ups on the local highways and interstates on the approaches to the now confirmed festival site. People had been just parking their cars along the roads and walking the remaining distance, which was reported to be up to 20 miles. I had decided not to drive my aged and unreliable car to the area. I didn’t want to have to leave it beside the road, plus I wasn’t sure if it would be up to the journey anyway. I had also talked my friend, John Davidson, into going with me, and heading there on September 1st, which would be a day before the festival actually began. John was a few years younger than me, and I had known John since we were kids, since my Grandparents had lived on the same block that he lived on in Zionsville. We tried to find someone else who would be going that we could catch a ride with but found that anyone planning to attend the festival had already departed for it. We thought about taking a bus, but the only buses going that direction were going to Evansville, and that would leave us many miles away from our destination. So, our solution was to hitchhike. Despite the fact that I had been feeling like I might be getting a cold, John and I loaded up a large military-style duffel bag with extra clothes, a couple of canteens of water and a few food items and set off to hitchhike to Bull Island.

In the past few years, many people have shared their experience of heading to Bull Island on social media.

Sharon C. remembers her experience heading to Bull Island and writes; “The car trip to the festival should have been a red flag, but we were young and on a mission to share the love! Blow-out on interstate, no spare. Long wait in line talking to all who walked by! Cops were cool and just asked for calm! Lol. No other way to be! Made it through the broken-down gates to settle in for a three day party that lasted four days! More memories later!”

Someone from Minnesota who prefers to remain anonymous said, “A buddy and I hitched down from the Twin Cities, but not without incident. A Wisconsin State Trooper nailed us for hitchhiking on the interstate on-ramp. After paying the fines, we made our way in a timely manner and were pleasantly surprised (since we had no money at that point), to find absolutely no one collecting at the gate when we got there. As a matter of fact, to this day, I don’t even know where the gate was at. We just ambled in down a dirt road.”

Beth P., a friend from Zionsville, also recalls going there; “I believe I rode with Larry M. and Sugar H. They looked after me since I was pregnant with my son. Concert was on Labor Day weekend. I had him on 9/26/1972. I was 16 years, 2 months old.”

Someone else wrote; I was only 15 when I got a ride with my older brother in the family’s gremlin. We parked on the interstate and that was the last I saw of him. Being alone, I sat about 100 yards from the stage...The gremlin got towed, so I hitchhiked back to Springfield, Ohio with only 3 dollars. That vending machine soup once sold in gas stations never tasted so good!”

Hitchhiking in those days wasn’t considered as hazardous as it is considered today, and you were more likely to get a ride from someone who looked like a hippie, as long as you looked like a hippie, too. As Ray K. from Mount Vernon said, “In 1972, if you saw a person with long hair, you trusted them without any questions being asked and you would always give hitchhikers a ride.”

Helping to build the stage can have its benefits, too as Rick C. from Carmi, Illinois can attest; “Caught sneaking in and had to help finish building the stage. I was 16. I had a place to sleep under the stage and they always had a big pot of soup to eat. It was a good experience for a 16- year-old kid. Best of memories!”

Another friend from my hometown, Stephen R., who also got there early enough to help do some work, wrote; “I went to Bull Island with Dave W. and Doc W. We helped build the stage and got in free!”

Gary W.: “The concert was supposed to last three days and start on Friday. I believe the ticket price was $17.50, but it was a free show when I got there on Saturday. I had to park my car on interstate 64. I will probably never see an interstate highway turned into a parking lot again. As a matter of fact, I bought an old 1956 Chevy Impala 4 door ($50) just to drive to the concert wherever it was going to be. There were 4 of us who went down there. I remember that I was going to hitch a ride, but my girlfriend’s brother suggested that we drive the car. The reasoning for me was, it was being broadcasted that you could not park within twenty miles of the concert, so why drive. It wasn’t that bad. We only had to walk about six miles off the interstate. I was concerned that they would tow my car, but that was completely unfounded.”

Tom H.; “Me and a buddy had just been hitchhiking back home from a 6 week road trip all over the southwest, and California and Northern Oklahoma, when we got picked up by a guy in a Volkswagen camper van who said he was heading to the Indiana festival. I don’t remember having tickets. We must have gotten there early, because somehow he parked his van right back beyond where the trucks got set ablaze one night.”

Bruce P.: “We got onto a narrow country road with cars parked on both sides of it, also in the fields beside it. We drove as close to the site as we could, about 2-3 miles away and parked my car. We started walking. A car passed us driving toward the site. There were about a dozen people on the car, on the hood, on the roof and on the trunk. The driver could barely see where he was going, so was driving very slowly. There was no room for anyone else to get onto the car, so we didn’t try.”

Peggy, from Evansville; “I was 24 and had met a State Trooper the night before who told me if I came out to the concert, he would see that I got in. We found the Trooper and he flagged us through in my car. What a mistake! As we drove through, people kept jumping on the car for a ride in. There were so many people, coolers, grills, sleeping bags, backpacks, etc., on the car that I couldn’t see to drive. That didn’t stop people from just hanging on. Eventually, there was so much weight on the car that it couldn’t move. The hitchhikers on the car were so mad, that when the car stopped, they threatened us. It’s a wonder we left with our lives. We actually did get to the stage and witnessed everything everybody else has described. It was an incredible experience that resembled an X-rated movie.”

A resident of the nearby town of Griffin, James A., had this to say; “It was a party. I remember everybody in Griffin sitting out watching all the people that swarmed the town. We weren’t far from the gate when they crashed it, and it was a free concert after that. I remember the catering service burning and somebody coming in with a tractor pulling a wagon and it had some horse troughs full of beer they were going to sell. Someone jumped up on it and yelled ‘free beer!’ and it was cleaned out in just a matter of minutes.”

Many of the festival attendees had arrived from the Illinois side of the Wabash. Kay H. of Posey County was one of them, but it didn’t go smoothly. She had gone to the festival with 3 friends she worked with at the Mount Vernon IGA, while she was a Senior at Mount Vernon High School. They had managed to catch a ride over the Wabash on a boat, but minutes after getting on board, they realized the driver of the boat was drunk. He ended up crashing the boat into a sand bar and they all had to push it out of the ankle-deep mud. She also remembers when a man came out of a tent naked and asked her what time it was. As she recalls, “Debbie (one of her friends) and I thought we were cool, but soon learned how really naive we were. And there was Dope Alley, where you could get all of the drugs and pills you wanted. It rained the first night, so we had to tough it out in our sleeping bags.”

Another post: “My parents owned a cabin on Black river at the time of the festival, so I remember a lot. A friend of my dad’s owned a cabin next door to us and had some business dealings with Mr. Alexander and Mr. Duncan, the promoters. They had hired my dad’s friend to drill 2 sandpoints and set up 2 water systems run by generators and the equipment was stored in our shed. The sand points were drilled and before the job was finished, my dad’s friend tried to cash the check written to him for the equipment and the labor. Guess what. The account was closed! So, all of the items went back to Evansville for a refund, so my dad’s friend was not stuck paying the bill. I had been told not to go to the island. I was to start my sophomore year of high school and I had not seen a lot of life at that time, but I saw a lot there. I had never seen a person doing drugs. A friend and I took a short cut across a dam to get to the island (after I was told not to by my dad). When we got to the dam, there were girls about my age swimming nude, and my dad and 4 of his friends were lighting cigarettes for the girls. I ran back to our cabin to get my mom. Dad and his friends went back to the cabin with my mom behind him! That was my chance to go to the island. There were cattle on the island and some of the people had killed a cow...