The barrels were garbage barrels, actually they were 55 gallon drums with the lids removed, about 100 of them. Not exactly a prestigious job but a job none the less. Our mission was to distribute the barrels around the site so the festival goers could discard their refuse during the three day event. Looking back on it, we were woefully under-barreled! This job took us around six hours because we had to basically move one barrel at a time and the site covered a pretty large area. At the end of the first day we took stock of our positions with the festival. We delivered the barrels to their assigned places and we still had days to go before the festival. We asked for a meeting with the Honcho to get new assignments. "Yeah, great, good job men!" the Honcho said. "We need hay bales brought to the front of the stage to create a barrier for the press!", "You'll find the hay at the front gate." The front gate was about a half mile away. "Sir?", I said in my best 'please don't take this the wrong way' inflection. "My dad has an old flat bed truck that is not being used this week. If we had that truck we could move the hay and just about anything else around here a lot easier." "Where's the truck?" Honcho asked. I told him we could be back in a couple of hours with it and I was sure dad wouldn't mind."Great! Let's do it, tell your dad I'll get him a couple of passes to the festival!" "He'll be ecstatic!" I laughed. We didn't know it at the time but we scored some points with the Honcho. By the second day Jay, Randy, Bob and I had done everything we had been assigned to do. Granted they were jobs that were not exactly brain teasers or back breakers but we had done them quickly and kept asking for more. Honcho was running out of errands and jobs so he asked us what we thought we could handle. Randy mentioned he was good with a hammer so he was sent to the stage. Bob was into electronics so he was sent to gopher for the sound company. Jay and I told Honcho we were artists and he thought for a minute. "Go grab Randy before he starts on working with the stage crew." Honcho ordered. "You guys head into Lewisville, buy some plywood, poles and paint and let's get some signs, designs and colors happening on the festival grounds. He gave us some bucks and off we went. The next week and a half we spent painting psychodelic scenes, big colorful arrows to the toilets and dozens of other helpful directions on the grounds. Jay was particularly fond of painting large psychodelic Rhino's and other menacing creatures, kind of a dichotomy trip. Speaking of trips, daily trips were made to buy paint, groceries, and what ever else had to be hauled. Dads truck was in constant motion and Randy was the official Trucking Logistics Officer of the Texas International Pop Festival. In just 3 days Randy went from Snow Cone schlepper to Pop Festival Sargeant. When Honcho wanted something handled, Randy was the man! He was a big guy and he knew how to throw it around. The great thing was that as Randy moved up through the ranks so did the rest of us. He knew who got him the job and he knew who provided the truck and it didn't hurt that we had been good friends for a few years either. Eventually Randy was given status as "Assistant to the Assistant Stage Manager" and this assured me a position on the stage as well. I was given my Red Stage Badge to make it official. I'm nineteen years old and I'm going to be walkin' around on stage with B.B.King, Led Zepplin, Janis, all of them! And the best part was that all of my friends were going to be sweating in that hot audience, looking at that cool stage and saying "Hey!, How'd he get up there?" and I'll be strutin' round the stage like George Jefferson acting like I knew what the hell I was doing! SHIT! . . . LIFE IS GOOD! The Man Cometh!