Comments & Curiosities:

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.” You know who said that? Three Dog Night said that. Well, they sang it actually, in April 1969.

It’s true — one can be a desperately lonely number. But if you’re in the market for some interesting numbers, try 1969 and 40. 1969 is a very easy year for me to remember, along with a gazillion other people around the world, including the Orange County Marketplace, which was born in 1969.

That may be why when the Orange County Fair is a memory and the Marketplace reopens its doors (just an expression, it doesn’t really have doors) it will reboot with a two-day tribute to the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969 that turned a muddy cow pasture in upstate New York into a monument to rock, roll and the tie-dyed, totally stoned whacked-out ’60s.

On Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 15 and 16, the exact dates of the blowout at Woodstock now forty years past, two ’60s retro bands will recreate the sounds of that legendary weekend and pay homage to Janis Joplin, John Fogerty, Sly & The Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Arlo Guthrie and more.

The concerts are at noon and 2 p.m. daily, no charge with your $2 swap meet admission, to say nothing of face painting, tie dye vendors, a hippie on stilts and one-dollar hot dogs.

If I get out there, I’m heading straight for the hippie on stilts, which is not something you see every day.

Today, the 1960s seem quirky and crazy and fun, sort of, but for those of us who got to see them in person, not so much.

The Sixties were America’s nervous breakdown and 1969 was the year the wheels came off. What went on in ‘69? Wow. Where does one begin?

It was actually a good year for Hollywood, with “Midnight Cowboy” (I’m walkin’ here!); “Easy Rider” (Head out on the highway / born to be wild,) and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (“Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you!”).

On TV, the Vietnam War and the protests over it were never-ending and a new children’s show with a really big bird, a grouch that lived in a garbage can and two underachievers named Bert and Ernie made its debut. In sports, it was a jaw-dropping year.

They laughed at Joe Namath when he predicted that his underdog Jets would win the Super Bowl, but they did, and no one on the planet predicted that the Mets would beat the Orioles in the World Series, but they did.

Of course, one event in July 1969 became the mother of all events, not just for that year but for all of history.

At 1:18 p.m. on July 20, 1969, forty years ago tomorrow to the day, Neil Armstrong eased the Apollo 11 lunar module onto the surface of the moon and said four of the most famous words in history: “The Eagle has landed.”

Along with a gazillion other people watching around the world, I couldn’t take my eyes off the television. The particular television I was watching was in my soon-to-be in-law’s family room, soon-to-be because my wife and would be married 19 days later.

Six hours later, Neil Armstrong made his way down the steps of the Lunar Module, lowered one foot to the lunar surface and said 12 more of the most famous words ever spoken:

“That’s one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.”

Moments later, Newport Beach’s very own Buzz Aldrin joined him and the two men strolled around the Lunar Module like they had just stopped at a rest stop to stretch their legs. Back on Earth, you could hear a pin drop.

That’s because the billion or so of us around the world who were kept forgetting to breathe. Human beings were walking around on the moon, and the world was watching them, live.

Woodstock wasn’t quite landing on the moon, but it was one of the oddest moments in our cultural history. Because of its totally stoned hippie/rock image, today people tend to think that Woodstock was a slap-dash, last-minute lost weekend with a few performers dropping by to do a number or two. Not.

It was a well-planned, well financed three-day festival produced by four New York entrepreneurs with a vision of an outdoor music festival in the farm fields of upstate New York featuring the biggest rockers of the time.

It might have been the Age of Aquarius with hair that was long and love that was free, but Woodstock wasn’t. Tickets were $18, about $75 today, and were sold in record stores all around the greater New York area.

Some 186,000 tickets were sold, but the promoters estimated that maybe another 15,000 people would show up just to hang out, so they prepared for as many as 200,000 people.

They were only off by 300,000 people.

By Friday evening, Aug. 15, half a million free spirits were making their way to a dairy farm that had been leased for the weekend near the tiny town of Bethel, N.Y.

Before long the roads were backed up for tens of miles until state troopers shut them down completely and told people to turn back, which wasn’t about to happen. Radio stations across the state were pleading with people to stay away.

But after sitting in endless lines of cars, trucks and buses for hours, people just left their vehicles in the middle of the road and headed to Bethel on foot, walking for hours.

The rain started and continued throughout the weekend, turning the farm fields beneath a half million pairs of feet into a calf-deep mud-bowl. Through it all, performances went on almost around the clock for three days, with a who’s who of Sixties rock on stage, hoping they wouldn’t be electrocuted in the rain or by the lightening or both.

By Sunday morning, people and blankets were literally disappearing beneath the mud. There were a number of births and two deaths, one a drug overdose — amazing that there was only one — and the other an unlucky soul who wandered off to a neighboring farm, bedded down for the night and was run over by a tractor at daybreak. City people are not good on farms.

So that’s it then. 1969, men on the moon and hippies in the mud. I guess you had to be there. I’m thinking the Woodstock Tribute at the Orange County Marketplace will be much less crazy, much more fun and definitely less muddy.

Remember, question authority, don’t trust anyone over 30; turn on, tune in, drop out. Yeah, that’s it. Thank God that’s over.

I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at [email protected] .