Interlude: Night Of The Living Dead

This is not a story about the time we went to that Dead Concert. I was about to write that story. The crux of the narrative as I typically related it was the storm. The storm of seventy something. What was that year? Research reveals no such storm.

I swear it snowed like crazy.

I appear to be the unreliable narrator at this juncture. I often tell this story and always end with The Night Of The Living Dead. I’m certain that was the movie Bob made me watch. True, the weed was giving me flashbacks but I know that was the one. Also I was like what? 15? That’s how I tell it. Better check that.

One can easily find out exactly when and where the Dead played. I knew Bob from St. Paul’s, so it would be sometime between 69 and 74. The best candidate turns out to be March 15–19, 1973. I could find live recordings of it though I’d have to know which show it was. Most likely it was the 19th. That night had some snow. Not that .7 inches is anything near the “blizzard that hit Long Island that night.”

And I was 16 in 1973. So why trust me if I say that Bob had warned me there was no way I’d find him at the concert. “It’s the Nassau Coliseum dude, there’ll be 50,000 people there.” And I thought he was right when I got there. But attendance that night was more like 6,000. I looked it up.

I was tripping, that’s true. But we did not go together. So I must have found him. I remember him hanging off the wide metal railing along the huge ramps, and that he was tripping too. That much is safe to assume.

It was Bob anyway. I used to sneak out of my room and down the long hallway — bathroom was just past his room, plausible cover if caught. I’d duck in and we’d sit on the window ledge, pulling the sash down on our knees, smoking pot three stories above the parking lot. Except maybe it was two stories. Still, not a great window to fall out of.

What can I say. Some of this is true. The “blizzard” that reduced our vision to a cloud of white may have been acid enhanced. But that’s how I remember it. It wasn’t 50,000 people in attendance. But it felt like it. Driving at 15 always sounded reliably crazy. But we were 16, and Bob could even have had his learner’s permit.

Still, I thought we were gonna die that night. Me and Bob, lost in the storm. If Bob was even his name. I could have that wrong. It could have been Jerry, or Phil — possibly Bill?

But it was The Night of the Living Dead. I’m sure of it.