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Blogs by Jean Sheldon
Twilight Zoned 7/8/2007 7:27:43 AM
In the early 60s, our family acquired a square wooden cabinet with a round tube in the middle—a black and white television. That was a very big deal. Dad was judicious about the amount of time we could spend in front of the strange object, which I’m very grateful for today.
My older brother loved the Three Stooges. I never got it. Only one show stands out in my mind from those days. A cutting edge television show at the time came from a man named Rod Serling and it was called the Twilight Zone.
Since my mom and dad both worked, there wasn’t time for many family outings or events. Remarkably, one of our events was that show. We sat around the clunky box and watched as Mr. Serling took us places we could have never imagined existed. Show after show, I found myself grateful that he talked at the end, because none of the rest of us could.
Eventually, during the warm weather, we migrated to the front porch to talk about what we had just seen. Back then, there were still stars in the Chicago sky and my father had this innate (and sometimes irritating) ability to look up and point out the Russian satellite, Sputnik, moving amongst them. After just watching the Twilight Zone, seeing the satellite had even greater meaning.
That show sparked my imagination as very few shows have since. Maybe it was because I was so young, or maybe because television itself was so young. Whatever the reason, I can remember entire episodes from over forty years ago.
I would like to write things that people could say that about forty years from now.
