Faith and the Fifth Dimension: "Walking Distance" (October 30, 1959)
“Walking Distance” receives wide and deserved acclaim as an episode full of striking and beautiful images. The back-to-back mirror reflections signaling Martin Sloan’s (Gig Young) return to his past. The canted camera angles used to present the carousel on which Martin chases his younger self (Michael Montgomery). The spotlight slowly constricting around him as he steps off that merry-go-round after young Martin is injured, and as the children among whom he no longer belongs fade into darkness.
In my most recent viewing, I noticed another powerful image, one I’d never noticed before. It occurs when Martin returns to the drugstore in his present, 1959.
As Marc Scott Zicree notes in his audio commentary, Martin is surrounded by young people who chatter excitedly and dance eagerly to rock-and-roll on the jukebox. Zicree doesn’t note, however, the solitary, older woman sitting quietly in the corner, smiling as she sips on a drink. Maybe it’s even a chocolate milkshake like Martin favors—though probably not a three-scoop, 35-cent variety!
The camera quickly pans past the woman. She calls no attention to herself. Martin doesn’t appear to notice her. But she’s obviously an older woman who doesn’t mind being surrounded by youth. Perhaps she goes out of her way to make a stop at that drugstore part of her afternoon routine, timing it just right so she can enjoy the atmosphere when the kids swarm in after school.
“When I was a child,” the apostle Paul wrote, “I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways” (1 Corinthians 13.11).
Martin Sloan has to learn the apostle’s lesson in this episode. As his father (Frank Overton) tells him, “there’s only one summer per customer.” But as Martin’s father also tells him, there are the equivalents of merry-go-rounds and band concerts in adult life, too.
It’s a lesson this anonymous older woman has learned. Putting away childish things doesn’t mean we need never enjoy childlike pleasures from time to time. It doesn’t mean we can never enjoy life with the wonder and delight of children ever again. Indeed, if we fail to do so, we may be headed for our own trip to the Twilight Zone… and may miss the way into the realm of God.