It was Halloween 1970 at The Oasis drive-in.

So I hadn’t seen Night of the Living Dead for fifty-five years—the 1968 original, not the 1990 pretender. Would you watch a redo of Casablanca?

There’s also a 1980 porn version, which, naturally, I haven’t seen. But, of course, I am curious. As was Sharon, my high school girlfriend, and I, which is why, at The Oasis, around the same time, we saw I Am Curious, Yellow, an erotic Swedish film with an R rating.

Sadly, the Oasis has been a Holiday Inn Express for three decades.

I re-watched Living Dead yesterday, before dawn—a mistake, as the night before I had forgotten to take out the garbage, and the can is in the garage, with a door we never lock. Alas, the night before, we had salmon, whose skin we didn’t put down the garbage disposal, and didn’t want to throw away because of raccoons who treat our garbage can as a breakfast nook.

Fortunately, Zombies mimic the gait of a 76-year-old man or my 93-year-old neighbor, Hazel, who joined me in a sortie to our waste bins.

We could outrun them.

Some films don’t age well. That is decidedly not true of Night of the Living Dead, from the opening orchestral tone-setting, with the eerie, ominous crescendo that tracks a slow-moving car through a cemetery, all the way through 96 minutes of terror, right up to an ending that still leaves me scratching my head.

I saw the film at The Oasis with three college buddies, Barrie, Denny, and Mike. Barrie picked us up, and I was the first to be dropped off after the film. Good ole Barrie, my best friend in college, who I still talk to a couple of times a year, stopped at the top of East Street, two blocks from my home. “You can walk from here, Gardner,” he offered with a sardonic smile.

For an eternity, or a moment, it depends on one’s perspective; I stood transfixed under a streetlight that, strangely, I had never noticed, though I had walked by it many times. And then I broke into a sprint down the brick street, not wanting to look left or right, only straight ahead to that distant driveway with the 10-foot stone walls that would deliver me to my back door. As I stood on the back stoop, puffing, on that cool fall night, I broke into a sweat. As I pulled the screen door toward me, I looked to my left and saw a figure coming toward me with his hands outstretched.

“I forgot to take the garbage out,” said my Dad. “How was the film?”

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