In early May, 2004, I stepped into the Twilight Zone. Actually, I drove to Binghamton, in upstate New York, just over the Pennsylvania line. For my wife the attraction was the Roberson Museum and Science Center, home of the world's largest and most eclectic collection of vintage carousel horses. Additionally, the town hosts six additional wood-carved antique carousels at local parks, making it (as it likes to boast) "The Carousel Capital of the World." All six are listed on both the New York State Historic Register and the National Register of Historic Places.
For myself, however, the attraction was the fact that Binghamton was the boyhood home of Rod Serling, the creator of the pathbreaking early TV show, "The Twilight Zone." We drove by the Binghamton Central High School, close to the downtown business district, from which Serling graduated in the war year of 1943. A historical marker stands on the tree-studded campus of the old school, noting its most famous graduate. The main building looks like a small private New England women's college, although there is an annex, built in the 1970s, which no doubt houses the "Rod Serling School of the Arts," of which we were told.
Not far from Serling's high school is the Forum Theater for the Performing Arts, on Water Street, which houses "Day of a Playwright," a permanent exhibit of Serling memorabilia. (If you visit and wish to view the photos and items in this exhibit, call 607-778-2480 first and ascertain hours of operation.)
However, like so many Rust Belt cities, Binghamton is a declining industrial town. Once a thriving shoe manufacturing center at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers, it lured tens of thousands of Southern and Eastern European immigrants around the turn of the twentieth century. They came to work in the Endicott-Johnson shoe factory, founded by George F. Johnson (1857-1948). Today that ethnic heritage is celebrated in festivals and with foods. But Binghamton no longer attracts workers, as it seems to have little work, the shoe factory having long since folded. On a Saturday morning we wandered around the downtown business district and had difficulty finding an open store, while there were many boarded up storefronts.
The cheek-by-jowl suburb of Endicott is the birthplace and home of a very different type of business, IBM, which began there in 1889 as the Bundy Company. The suburbs also boast an institution of higher learning, Binghamton University, where SF author Joanna Russ once taught in the English Department. She moved on some years back, but Johnny Hart, creator of the newspaper cartoon "B.C.,"who died in 2007, still lived in the suburbs and his drawings can be found on civic buildings all over Broome County, in which Binghamton is located.
However, we weren't there for ethnic or industrial heritage or for the university or for cartoons. We were there for Rod Serling and the carousels. The Roberson Museum's carousel exhibit has an example of every conceivable type of carousel animal. Horses, of course, predominate, both plain and elegant, but other "jumpers" and "prancers" include such farm animals as pigs, dogs, and giant roosters, as well as camels, elephants, gorillas pulling chariots, and fantastical mythological beasts of every description.
In addition to the Roberson, there are six still-working antique carousels in the "Triple Cities" (as the locals call Binghamton, Endicott, and nearby Johnson City). Between 1920 and 1934, shoe magnate Johnson donated these carousels to local parks. To this day the six still offer free rides to all. Johnson came from a poor background and was only rarely able to afford rides on merry-go-rounds while growing up. Remembering his youth when he yearned for, but could not ride, the carousels, he mandated that the municipalities to which he donated the carousels never charge money for rides. Instead, the Triple Cities charge a fee of "one piece of litter." This has to be one of the biggest entertainment bargains in America -- certainly better than the $55 daily admission fee Disney World currently charges.
The six Triple Cities carousels (though not all the ones in the Roberson Museum) were manufactured by the Allan Herschell Companies of North Tonawanda, New York, in the "country fair" style comprising barnyard animals, as well as the traditional horses. Two of the park carousels (including the one in Serling's neighborhood) still provide calliope music from the original Wurlitzer Band Organs.
The oldest of the park carousels is located in Binghamton's Ross Park. Installed in 1920, it features 60 jumping horses, four-abreast; two chariots (one pulled by monkeys); and the original 51-key Wurlitzer Military Band Organ. The park also features the fifth-oldest zoo in America and a Carousel Exhibit only slightly smaller than the one in the Roberson Museum.
The next-oldest is the one in C. Fred Johnson Park in next door Johnson City. Installed in 1923, it is the largest of the six, featuring 72 figures, four-abreast. The original scenic panels remain and it is situated inside a large pagoda-style carousel house. (All of the carousels are enclosed in their original houses, making it possible to protect them from the elements in winter.) This carousel is located in the old Endicott-Johnson shoe factory and was a recreation area for Johnson's workers (who seems to have been that rara avis, an enlightened boss who actually cared about his workers).
The last of the carousels to be installed was the one in George F. Johnson Park in Endicott. Dating from 1934, it was historically renovated in 1994 and a glass enclosure was added in 1999. Still in its original carousel pavilion, it has 36 horses, three-abreast, with two chariots.
But, the carousel which interested me the most was the one in Binghamton's George F. Johnson Recreation Park on Beethoven Street (many of the surrounding streets are also named after classical composers). Installed in 1925, it includes 60 jumping horses, four-abreast; chariots; and the original two-roll Wurlitzer Military Band Organ -- with bells! The original carousel house cupola has recently been restored.
Recreation Park itself is large, with copses of mature trees and small ground undulations here and there, perfect for small boys to roll down. It also has a baseball field, an original swimming pool with a bathhouse, a small reflecting pool for toddlers, tennis courts, a small Greco-style bandshell, and a statue of benefactor George F. Johnson. It is surrounded on all sides by well-kept, solidly middle-class homes, with nicely-manicured lawns and yuppies walking their dogs. And it is also Rod Serling's neighborhood park, in which he played most nights as a boy, weather permitting, and where he rode the then-new carousel for free -- providing he brought a piece of litter.
Rodman Serling (b. 1924) was raised just a short walk away from this park at 67 Bennett Street. His father was a wholesale butcher, which means he did not stand behind a counter in a bloody apron chopping single steaks for local matrons. Rather, he sold large quantities of meat to schools, hospitals, and other such local institutions. Consequently, he did very well financially, thank you, even during the Great Depression of the Thirties. Perhaps this was one reason Rod Serling remembered his childhood as one of "warmth, comfort and well-being."
Certainly the old Serling home still looks warm and comfortable. It sits on a quiet, middle-class, tree-lined residential street. In May the trees were just in blossom and their brilliant blooms made me think of the suburban neighborhood from the "Twilight Zone" episode, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," which Serling wrote for the first season of his TV series. The house is white, wood-frame, two-storied with a front cupola for a room in the attic. There is an enclosed entry way topped by a widow's walk. The house is two spacious rooms wide and seems to be three rooms deep, for a total of at least 12 rooms, not counting the attic room or rooms and the basement. There is a one-story garage which seems to have been recently tacked onto the side of the house. The front yard had several trees in bloom and handrail-lined steps led up to a small front porch containing stacked white chairs. Unfortunately, no one answered the doorbell, which I was gauche enough to ring, so I have no idea what the interior of the house looks like.
While I was taking pictures of the house and street, the next door neighbor came out to investigate. When I told her why I was there, she said I was part of the tradition. When her family first moved onto the street, they had no idea they were living next door to Serling's boyhood home. They wondered why there was a fairly regular stream of cars gliding slowly past the house, with cameras clicking. Sometimes people would get out and walk around, taking pictures. That's how they discovered they'd moved into the Twilight Zone.
But, it doesn't bother her or her family. They enjoy the brush with fame. Her teenage daughter had never heard of the Rod Serling or the "Twilight Zone" when they moved in, but has since done extensive research on the man and the show and has written a paper on both for one of her high school classes.
I asked about the family that lived there now. They seem pleasant enough, she said, but she doesn't really know them. They keep to themselves. It sounded like modern suburbia. Perhaps it was different in Serling's day.
Back at the park we spent some time at the carousel and the bandshell. The latter resembles a large Greek gazebo, with Doric columns supporting a domed roof. Think of a smaller version of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. In the middle of the gazebo's floor, in place of a statue of Thomas Jefferson, is a circular bronze plate flush with the concrete in which it is embedded. Carved onto the plate is: "Rod Serling, Creator of The Twilight Zone, 'Walking Distance.'"
The latter is a reference to the 1959 first season "Twilight Zone" episode of the same name, which starred Gig Young and which was inspired by this park, this carousel, and this gazebo. In the story (this is all from decades-old memory, so I may have the details wrong), Gig Young is a typically-frazzled businessman on a commuter train which breaks down in a rural area. He is told it will take some hours to make repairs. He asks the conductor where they are and is told that they are only a mile or so from his own hometown! It is certainly within "walking distance," so he decides to walk down the road apiece.
Our Hero finds his hometown all as he remembers it, including the boys playing in the park just as he played in the park as a kid. He finds the familiar old gazebo where he remembers, as a boy, carving his initials into one of the pillars, and he looks for them. (So did I. According to local lore, Rod Serling carved his initials into the gazebo as a boy, just as Our Hero did.) The initials are not where Our Hero remembered them to be. (Nor was I able to find the initials "RS" anywhere on the gazebo.)
Our Hero then walks a few blocks down the street to his boyhood home. It looks much the same. On impulse, he rings the doorbell. And, of course, his long-dead father, looking just as remembered, comes to the door. It seems the frazzled businessman has walked into his past.
Our Hero excitedly tells his father that he is the son, grown up. The father (and mother) think the adult stranger at their door is a lunatic and drive him away with threats to call the police.
It is now twilight and Our Hero dejectedly returns to the park. He notices one of the boys playing in the park woods. The boy approachs the gazebo and begins to carve his initials into one of the pillars. Our Hero goes nearer and sees that the boy is carving Our Hero's initials into the post. The boy is Our Hero at a younger age!
Our Hero accosts his younger self, frantic to tell him the most important discovery he has learned in all the years since he carved his initials into the park gazebo: These are the best years of your life! Treasure them! Don't be in a hurry to grow up!
The boy thinks the old man is a dangerous loon and runs away. In sadness Our Hero returns through the gloom to his boyhood home, not knowing what else to do. His father is sitting on the front porch smoking a pipe. The old man notices Our Hero and motions him to approach. Our Hero had blurted out such intimate details in their previous encounter that no stranger could have known them. Perhaps, through some miracle, the stranger really is the old man's son, all grown up.
They talk. They share intimacies. The old man declines to ask about the future. But he tells Our Hero that he doesn't belong in "this time." He should return to his own time, knowing what he now knows, and let his younger self grow up in his own way, making his own mistakes.
Our Hero realizes the wisdom of his father's advice and they part, having reached a sort of understanding. Our Hero returns to his commuter train, now repaired and ready, and looks wistfully back down the road to his past, sadder but wiser. His hometown may be within "walking distance," but his past no longer is. That is the way of the world. And he accepts it.
There is so much about this story which comes directly out of Serling's life: the neighborhood, the house, the park, the carousel, the gazebo with the initials carved on it. It is tempting, therefore, to think that the emotions and attitudes also came out of Serling's life.
After graduating from Binghamton's Central High School in 1943, Serling joined the army. He became a paratrooper in the Pacific Theater, preparing to jump into Japan in the Big Invasion which was cancelled after Nagasaki. Not long after he returned from the war, he moved to New York City to try to make it as a writer. He scuffled along writing for radio shows and then the nascent medium of television. He worked hard, wrote a lot, and soon began to have some success. He won six Emmies for such teleplays as "Patterns" (1955), "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (1956), and "The Comedian" (1957). And in 1959 he launched a new TV anthology series he'd dreamed up, "The Twilight Zone," for which he was contractually obligated to write the bulk of the stories.
He began churning out stories. And the fifth of the stories he wrote for that first season was "Walking Distance," in which Our Hero slips 30 years back into his own fondly-remembered childhood in order to tell his younger self not to be in a hurry to grow up.
Serling had gone very far in a very short time. He was only 35-years-old and only 16 years out of high school. But, he was already a veteran of a world war. And he was a success at the profession he had thereafter pursued with much passion. He was an award-winning writer and was honored with his own TV show, which he also hosted. He was at the beginning of his greatest fame, writing stories for millions of viewers each week and for which he would soon win three Hugos between 1960-62.
But was this young man, not that far out of his twenties, also already nostalgic for his "warm and comfortable" boyhood, which he remembered as a time of such "well-being"? Given the autobiographical details of "Walking Distance," it is hard not to consider this possibility.
Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
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