A Visit To The Past, The Twilight Zone

This was first published in October 2014, updated a little and photo added November 6, 2020

Way back when, there was a great episode of "The Twilight Zone," called "Walking Distance,"* starring actor Gig Young as Martin Sloan, whose corporate exec-type character decides to visit his hometown to find the happiness and good times of his childhood. The only thing is, his visit literally takes him back to the time when he was a child, some 25 or 30 years before. He sees a little boy, himself. He sees his parents as they were back then. The whole town is still as it was when he was a young boy. He sees the carefree life of his childhood contrasted with the stress of his adult life in the corporate world. When he tries to convince his parents he is their son, now long since grown up, they are frightened. His father finds the man's wallet and sees from its content that the man is telling the truth, but in the meantime, the man finds his childhood version riding the merry-go-round. He talks to the boy and tries to tell him about life and how to enjoy his childhood while he has it, but the boy too is scared and he falls from the ride, injuring his leg. The father comes to the man and essentially tells him he knows he's his son, but he's had his time in the town, and in his past, and that now he needs to move on, and to try looking forward to find the things he came home to find. There's far more to this story than what I'm writing, but I haven't seen this episode in quite some time, and I can't recall some of the details.

The past can be a great place to visit, but we shouldn't try to live there. It gives us comfort and reassurance to visit the past, because we know what happened then. With the future, we can't be totally sure of what may come, and it often makes us anxious. The other day I was at the grocery store and they had music on in the background. The song playing was "Ghost Riders In The Sky," a song I know well from way back in the 1960s, although Johnny Cash did a version later on. The version I most prominently remember** was done by a group many of you may not recognize, "The Baja Marimba Band." The group dressed in Mexican style clothes, at least stereotypical Mexican clothes from movies from that era, with sombreros and such, and the marimba was one of their most prominent instruments. Hmm, that must be why they called it the "Baja MARIMBA Band; how clever, who'd have thunk that... I mean thought that. I believe the band was the brainchild of Herb Alpert, whose band, "Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass," was extremely popular at that time, and it had a Mexican sound and attire to it. Alpert was one of the founders of "A&M Records," a record label company, and the "Baja Marimba Band" was associated with that company. I can't say for certain, but I don't believe either band had a member of Mexican descent, and Alpert himself was Jewish, as was the "Baja" band's marimba player and band head, Julius Wechter. I loved both bands and any bars or restaurants with jukeboxes, which were quite common in those days, were highly likely to have a song, or several, included from the bands, especially from the Tijuana Brass. Most places charged a nickel or a dime to play a song. My friends laughed the way I loved to sing along and dance to the Tijuana Brass version of the show tune, "Mame," which was on lots of jukeboxes back then. Occasionally one of them would put money in the jukebox, just to see me perform. Damn! I knew I missed my calling somewhere along the line.

Anyway, the music at the store caused me to dig out my CDs of both bands, and I played and reveled in the songs I had so loved from those days, now so long ago. The Tijuana Brass started over 50 years ago ... ah, I've been told. Okay, I remember. As I was leaving the store that day, on came another song from those times, this one,"Downtown," by Petula Clark, a highly popular singer from England back then. All in all, I had a great visit to the past, to the wonderful, but turbulent Sixties, a time of lots of great music, 45 rpm records and jukeboxes, but then, like the man in the Twilight Zone episode, it was time to return to the present. It was great while it lasted. Hmm, anyone got a dime for the jukebox, if we can find one?

* The episode title comes from the fact that Martin Sloan is driving back to his hometown and stops at a roadside garage for some work on his car. His hometown is only down the road, so while the mechanic works on his car, Martin walks to his old hometown, because it's only "Walking Distance." The episode was first broadcast in October 1959.      

 

** The song was done a little earlier in the 1960s by Frankie Laine, a version I also recall, but the song actually dates from even before then.

 

Photo is of "The Twilight Zone Encyclopedia" by Steven Jay Rubin, Chicago Review Press, 2018. It contains lots of facts and information about the series and the episodes.

 WORD HISTORY:

 Pass/Past-The noun form "past" usually includes the definite article "the," or a possessive form like, "my," "your," "his/her," "our," or "their," and means, "time that has gone by, time period encompassing time that has gone by," also, "the tense of a verb expressing actions already having taken place." The verb "pass" has many meanings, including: "hand or throw something from your possession to another, to travel beyond someone or beyond a given point, elapsing time, to develop/to happen, go through something, to exceed or do well in some test or endeavor," and there are many other variations. "Pass" goes back to Indo European "peton," which had the notion of "spread, spread out." This gave its Italic offspring "pando(n)," apparently with the "n'' sound transposed with the "d" sound, but written as "d," ^ and which meant "to spread out, to stretch out," which gave Latin "pandere,'' with the same stretch meaning, but also "step," from the sense, "stretch the leg outward." Its participle form, "passus," was also used as a noun for "step." This produced the verb "passare," which meant "to step;" thus also, "walk," and further, "to walk by or beyond a given point." This gave Old French, a Latin-based language, "passer," meaning, "move from one location to another, exceed (that is, "go past something"), pass, traverse." English borrowed the word from French in the latter 1200s as "passen," ^^ and the past and participle form, "passed," later became "past," when used as a noun, or as an adjective. By the way, "pass" is closely related to "pace;" that is, "act of taking steps, rate of walking, or movement."

^ It is not uncommon in the Indo European languages to see "d" or "t" used interchangeably through history. This is evident in the Germanic branch, as German has "Tag," which is the same word as English "day," which was once spelled "daeg." German "Deutsch" (English translation: German) is spelled with a "T" in some German dialects.

^^ Like its German cousin still does, English once formed many infinitive verb forms by adding "en" to the root word. This gave the verb the meaning, "to," and whatever the activity of the root meant, such as "to see," "to do," "to walk." Back then, however, English speakers did not need to say the word "to," as the "en" form of the verb meant that, as it still does in German. For example, German "Ich muss gehen," means both, "I must go," or "I have to go."