At Woodstock’s 20-Year Curtain Call, a Lonely Stage

--What if they didn’t give a concert and everybody came? Not a single rock star was scheduled to perform, but cars were lining the roads leading to the former Max Yasgur farm where the Woodstock Festival took place 20 years ago. A crowd estimated to be at least 20,000 showed up, although some proved themselves less hardy than their predecessors by leaving when they were rained on. In contrast, a reunion concert 12 miles from Bethel, N.Y., at a resort flopped when only 250 people came to see such performers as John Sebastian and Edgar Winter. An offer to move the concert to the farm was nixed by Bethel. “There’s enough frenzy here already,” town Supervisor Allan Scott said. Most of the Woodstock pilgrims were willing to pay a $5 donation, which is to go toward cleaning and reseeding the field when the party’s over. Current owners Jeff and Charlie Gelish were paying half the cost of providing water and portable toilets, and garbage and ambulance services were donated. The crowd was an eclectic mix including hippies, bikers, Grateful Dead fans, middle-aged tourists and housewives. Local musicians were doing their best to entertain the crowd on a makeshift stage, using sound equipment and a generator that were donated. Finally, one of the original performers, Melanie, showed up for a 45-minute encore. “Twice in one lifetime, what more could you want?” she said.

--An original painting of Mickey Mantle used to create his 1953 baseball card fetched $110,000 as the Topps Co. auctioned 35 years’ worth of rare cards and pictures. Topps spokesman Norman Liss said the winning bid was from Marriott Corp., which also paid $80,000 for artwork of Willie Mays from the same year. A Jackie Robinson painting brought $71,000 from an unidentified bidder. Paintings of Whitey Ford, Bob Feller and Roy Campanella went to the Rarities Group of Marlboro, Mass., a collectibles company, for prices ranging from $15,000 to $32,000.

--The object of the game is to go down the water slide and reach the air-conditioned doghouse. On the weekend before jury selection begins in PTL founder Jim Bakker’s trial on fraud and conspiracy charges, the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina published a board game called “Down the Tube.” It asks true-false questions about the lives of Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye. If you land on Tammy’s face, you advance four spaces. But if you land on evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, you must “return to start and sob your heart out.”