The final 5 of the best pisodes of The twilight Zone...
5. Walking Distance
Opening narration:
Martin Sloan, age thirty-six. Occupation: vice-president, ad agency, in charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloan. He perhaps doesn't know it at the time, but it's an exodus. Somewhere up the road he's looking for sanity. And somewhere up the road, he'll find something else
Story:
A middle-aged man, Martin Sloan), is driving cross-country when he stops his car at a gas station. He walks toward his hometown, Homewood, that the attendant assures him is within walking distance. Homewood appears exactly as it was when he was a boy. He goes into a dugstore, and has an ice cream soda at the soda fountain while recalling his memories from the past. He says "One of the greatest memories I have is old man Wilson, may God rest his soul, sleeping in his comfortable chair just like he did before he died". The clerk looks at Sloan oddly but says nothing. After Sloan leaves the store, the cashier goes up to a room where Mr. Wilson is sleeping and says "We'll need more chocolate syrup, Mr. Wilson." He responds by saying "I'll order some more of it this afternoon."
Sloan continues walking until he eventually sees himself as a boy, and following him home, meets his parents. Trying to convince his parents that he is their son from the future, he succeeds only in alarming the disbelieving couple who tell him to leave. He finds his childhood self on a carousel, and tries to warn his younger self to enjoy his childhood before it is too late. His advances scare young Martin, who falls off the merry-go-round and injures his leg. Sloan is then confronted by his father who, having seen the papers in Sloan's wallet with its dollar bills from the future, now believes his story. His father advises him that everyone has their time, and that he should look to the future rather than to the past, because the happiness he is seeking may be in the places he hasn't looked yet. Sloan finds himself back in his own time, now walking with a limp, but resigned again to his life as it is.
Closing narration:
Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone.
