[lumberjim]

After the shows had finished in Boston, we stopped in to visit our friend Dan’s relatives who lived nearby in Connecticut. We all showered, and slept fully stretched out for the first time in too long. In a house. Strange how good a thick carpeted floor feels to sleep on after sleeping bent up in a van for a few weeks. We had a REAL breakfast, and then we headed for Woodstock again. The Dead’s next show wasn’t until the end of October, and as it was September 27th, we had some time to kill. So, we headed back to camp in that campground. We spent another week camping there, but it started raining and didn’t stop. By the third day, we decided to take up an offer of hospitality that someone had garnered and connected with a couple that lived in Kingston, which was only about a half hour south of Woodstock. I don’t remember the people’s names whose house we stayed in that night, but I do remember that they had a pit bull. A nice one named Delilah. Very affectionate, but very strong. The next morning, in talking to our hosts, we found out that it was really, really easy to get food stamps in this town. I was resistant to the idea, having been raised to earn my own, but Heather, Jeremiah, and Rachel had all done it before, and it was a great way to get some food in your belly. So I went along with them. We wore dirty clothes, and I’m sure we stunk to high Heaven. There were a couple of brief interviews, and within about an hour and a half, we walked out of that office with something like $300 in food stamps, with more available if we were still in New York in two weeks. To the Grocery store!! I felt very guilty when I was paying for that food with food stamps that I didn’t deserve. But I was hungry. Time to begin the second phase of our trip.