Walking Distance

Date

25.10.24

Martin Sloan is a businessman, harried, tired, fed up with his life, and looking for a break from it all. He finds himself at a filling station just outside the town of Homewood, where he grew up...

"Walking Distance"

The Twilight Zone, Season 1 Ep 5 (10/30/59)

Not Rated

Directed by Robert Stevens CBS Television Network

Starring Rod Serling, Gig Young, Frank Overton

A businessman finds himself traveling back not only to the town where he grew up, but to the time when he was a boy in the town.

Opening Thoughts

I went to my college reunion recently. I guess technically this would have been my 28th reunion, which I know is an odd number, but the reason I and so many of my classmates attended this particular one was because our alma mater, Eastern Nazarene College, is closing its doors and shutting down for good. This news was heartbreaking to me, because I loved not only my college experience, but the college itself. The campus is a beautiful 21 acres dotted with red brick buildings, anchored in one corner by the Wollaston Church of the Nazarene, and it was my home for four years. I have incredible memories and rich friendships from my time spent there that I know I’ll treasure forever.

As I was walking around the campus, I was experiencing simultaneous joy and sadness. Joy at the lovely day, seeing so many old friends again, having so much fun spending time with them. And deep, aching sadness knowing this was the last time I would ever be able to walk about the campus and explore its buildings. Having lived there for four years, I knew every corner, capstone, nook, and cranny. My favorite climbing tree. The window in the boys’ dorm where my friend used to live. The corner of the library stacks which was my favorite study spot. The snack bar had cheeseburgers that were so good, that I still crave them sometimes. So many memories were washing over me as I ambled around, I almost felt like I had stepped back in time. I felt like a student again, on my way to a basketball game or play rehearsal or class, and in that moment, I would have done almost anything to freeze time. To stay there just a while longer, to return to that more carefree time in my life, before the weight of adulthood began to close in.

Then I was reminded of one of my favorite episodes of the original Twilight Zone, “Walking Distance.” Let’s revisit it together, yes?

Spoilers For Walking Distance here!

Martin Sloan is a businessman, harried, tired, fed up with his life, and looking for a break from it all. He finds himself at a filling station just outside the town of Homewood, where he grew up. As his car is being worked on, he decides to visit Homewood, as it’s only a mile and a half down the road, “walking distance.”

As Martin wanders about Homewood, he enjoys himself thoroughly, being refreshed by the sights and sounds of his hometown as fond memories resurface. But he starts to notice a few odd things…ice cream sodas that cost only a dime, a teen showing off his “brand new” 1937 roadster, and a merry-go-round that has long since been torn down. Strangest of all is when he sees himself, as a boy, carving his own name into the bandstand in the town park. Following the boy, he returns to his childhood home, but his parents don’t know him and think he’s crazy. He searches for the boy and finds him on the merry-go-round, but when he approaches him, the boy flees in fear, falling and injuring his leg. At the same time, Martin the adult collapses at a sudden pain in his own leg.

As he sits in despair, Martin’s father slowly approaches him. Mr. Sloan produces the wallet Martin had dropped at the house and finally recognizes the man before him as his adult son. Martin laments to his father how he just wanted to tell himself to appreciate the good times he’s experiencing “now,” because soon they will all be gone. His father tells him he cannot stay here because the past belongs to his younger self and it would be wrong to try and steal it from him. Instead, he encourages Martin to stop looking backward, and start looking forward into the future, which has its own “merry-go-rounds and summer band concerts.” Martin, realizing his father is right, bids him goodbye and finds himself back in the present, with a new limp from his childhood injury.

So What Did God Show Me?

“Walking Distance” starts off a little slow, but it warms up fast. (That’s one about this show- I am constantly amazed that they can form something so wonderfully meaningful and cohesive in twenty-four minutes!)

Martin seems like a lot of us these days, run-down, and longing for when life was simpler, less chaotic. I think Martin decided to visit Homewood to try and help himself remember those things about his childhood that brought him joy, a joy he’s lost in his busy adult life. I completely understand this, I am a very nostalgic person, and find myself quite often looking back, remembering with sugared thoughts times from my childhood, vacations, holidays, family traditions, and events. I love telling stories about the time we did “so and so”, and that time we “went there with them and did that thing.” I have had longings of my own to reclaim my childhood joys. I think I can safely say this is something we all desire at some point as adults, to recapture even a little of the innocence, freedom, and joy we had as children. To live again with fewer responsibilities and fewer worries.

The scene where Martin first meets his parents, who have been dead for several years, made me pause. Martin doesn’t seem hugely surprised to see his mother and father young and alive again, instead, he tries to just walk into their home and “back” into his place as their child. He doesn’t seem to realize how upsetting this is to them and just keeps trying to prove to them that he is who he says he is, their son, and that his rightful place is with them. When Martin was yelling at his mother “Don’t you know your own son?” I was getting shades of “It’s a Wonderful Life” when George is lost in his own Twilight Zone-esque world where he’s never been born and his mother doesn’t recognize him.

This scene made me think about my own parents. My father died in 2017, from a laundry list of ailments, including cirrhosis of the liver, type 2 diabetes, and pancreatic cancer. When he died he was a pale shadow of the man I remember going to visit as a child, the one who would take me and my brother horseback riding and to SeaWorld. My mother died in 2022, and while she was vibrant and full of life to the end, type 1 diabetes and heart issues just wore her body out. I remembered them when they were young, strong, with many years ahead of them, when my relationships with them hadn’t gone through the turbulence that would come later when I was a teenager and a young adult.

I wonder what they would think if I showed up in front of them, a fully grown adult? What would my parents “back then” think of the woman I’ve become? Would they approve? Disapprove? And how would their reaction to seeing my present self affect the ways they raised me, knowing what I would turn out to be? I know, it sort of bends your brain to think about it.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Martin goes stumbling around and confronts his younger self, managing to completely freak the boy out, enough to injure himself, and consequently, adult Martin as well. Again, it made me wonder, how would a younger me, say, age ten, have responded to seeing an adult me? I think back to where I was mentally and emotionally at age ten, how I had decades of life ahead of me, and how I was so eager to grow up because being a grown up seemed so exciting! I could stay up late and eat candy whenever I wanted and buy things with credit cards! But I think, if at age ten I was forced to face the reality of being a grown-up, with all of its responsibilities and weight, I would have screamed and fled, just like young Martin did. The adult me knows now that staying up late every night just makes you tired, that eating lots of candy makes you overweight, and overusing credit cards puts you in debt. And that’s not even touching on the knowledge that my ten-year-old self didn’t have that I do: my parents have passed away, I’m still single, I have no children, and on the surface, haven’t seemed to have really accomplished much in my life. (Which of course is not true, as my Reverse Bucket List can attest to!) We, as children, are not meant to have the future forced upon us in such a way. God didn’t make children with the maturity or understanding to handle such things at that point in their lives.

But, it’s also important to remember it’s not all heavyweight stuff when you become an adult. There are accomplishments to celebrate, marriages to take part in, homes to decorate and fix up, and children to bear. These things all have their own pleasures and satisfactions for adults. And while those things are fun to imagine and even play at when you’re young, again, children simply can’t comprehend the intricacies of such things as mortgages, childbirth, oil changes, and a forty-hour work week.

In the end, Martin only succeeds in frightening almost everyone he meets, and he is left despairing at what he lost, his past. His father, finally recognizing him, comforts and encourages him, telling Martin instead of looking back always to the past, (which belongs rightfully to his younger self and cannot be shared) to look forward to his own future, which will have “merry go rounds, cotton candy, and summer band concerts” of its own. That someday his future self will look back fondly on his present self, even as he is looking back on his past self now. God really used this scene in particular to speak powerfully to me.

As much as I long to revisit my youth, when I am honest, I know the truth of my past is not exactly how I remember it. My memories are tinted with nostalgia and therefore I am seeing it through rose-colored glasses, and hearing the music of my own summer band concerts. I was a shy bookworm of a child, who was bullied and had trouble studying. I had a hard relationship with my mother for a while and struggled with depression. For every vacation I remember with fondness, I know there were sunburns, mosquito bites, fights with my siblings or my mother. The ice cream melted or got dropped on the sidewalk, it rained on picnic days, we got flat tires. I know that.

So what would I do if I were given the same chance as Martin? I confess I would like very much to go back to the ‘80s and experience that time period again. I’d like to see movies like Back to the Future, The Terminator, or The Goonies on the big screen with an audience “for the first time.” I’d like to find brand new editions of books now forty or fifty years old. I’d like to eat at restaurants that don’t exist anymore, and shop in stores long since gone out of business. I too would like to wander around my hometown and enjoy it the way it was when I was young.

But I’d avoid my younger self…I don’t have to tell her to make sure she enjoys it…I know she did.

No one should bring the sum of adult knowledge and experience to a child, or even a young adult…it would crush them and kill the very childlike innocence that we long to find again. It’s like in Our Town, when Emily finally realizes she can’t go back, that things will never be that way again, no matter how much she wishes they could be, and that she must stay where she is.

So does this mean we are all doomed to constantly be looking behind us, like Lot’s wife, forever wishing we could be where we were? No! There is hope! As I watched this episode, I felt God giving me a reminder, a promise. He reminded me that there are many more “merry-go-rounds, cotton candy, and summer band concerts” to look forward to! There really are! God’s gifts and opportunities are new every morning, and it’s such a mistake to think that all of our “good times” have already come and gone. I only have to look at my Reverse Bucket List to know that this is always going to be true. It’s harder to look forward, of course it is. It’s easier to look back, because the past is there, solid and familiar, and you have the proof of things that happened. Looking forward requires trust and bravery. Looking towards the future is truly facing the unknown. But I look forward to the future and embrace it as it continually forms around me. There are unwritten stories ahead, tales waiting to be retold someday, around another campfire. “Remember when we did that thing? When we went there? With her/him?” God has given us many promises that he has good things in store for us. Even if you are in a bad patch in your life right now, God has promised to lead you through the valley of the shadow of death, through the wilderness like the Israelites, to a good land. He has much in store for us. He made us for so much more! He has given us gifts and talents to use for his glory, both now and later, when we are finally reunited with him.

So if you ever find yourself looking back at your Homewood and lamenting the loss of the “good old days,” I encourage you: don’t focus too long on what’s behind you. Instead, why not share your past with the next generation? Take your children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, or just young buddies and introduce them to everything that gave you joy as a child! There are so many things to share with youth these days that they might never have experienced before, and who better to introduce them than you? I’ve had so many adventures with young friends! I’ve taken friends trick or treating for the first time and then settled down to trade candy while watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I’ve taken friends to Storyland in Glen, NH, and take selfies with them in the exact locations I stood in forty years before. I sat down with a young friend and watched Saturday morning cartoons (curated by me and YouTube) with big bowls of sugar cereal. The point is, everything you love and enjoy about your past can be enjoyed again!

Closing Thoughts

The dawn of the internet age has made nostalgia into a booming business. Websites like eBay, the Internet Archive, and Youtube have enabled us to relive the past in ways that have never been possible before. We are able to wear the same clothes, watch the same shows, and even play with the same toys that we did as children. Sequels to ‘80s movies such as Top Gun: Maverick and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice have become blockbusters forty years after the originals broke box office records. Kate Bush cashed in on her song “Running Up That Hill” forty years after she wrote it due to it being featured on Stranger Things. Nostalgia is all around us, and while it can be thoroughly enjoyable, it can also become all too easy to get lost in. Don’t forget God made you to move forward in your life, not stay stagnant. There’s more in store for you, I promise. Don’t give up on your life. For example, next month I turn fifty. It could be super easy for me to sink into depression, feeling that all the “good times” have come and gone, and there’s not much left to look forward to. But instead, I choose to believe I’m just getting started, and that God’s got things in store for me that I can’t even imagine. Here’s to another half-century!

Links I Like

Links I like:

Watch the “Walking Distance” episode on Pluto TV for free!
Read the script of “Walking Distance” here
The “Nostalgia Critic” discusses “Walking Distance” for his “Twilight-tober” video series
A great “Walking Distance” blog post at View From the Junkyard I stumbled across
graphic novel version of “Walking Distance” for sale on Amazon
”Memories” – the musical theme to “Walking Distance”, by renowned composer Bernard Herrmann
An article about Binghamton, NY, where Rod Serling grew up and which partially inspired him to write “Walking Distance”

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Drop your favorite part of the episode in the comments below. Got another episode you love? I’d love to hear which one!