Zoned #AtoZChallenge

Today is the last day of April, and it's the last day of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.  It's time to end our virtual journeying from Florida to Vermont and back again with a "Z" post.  

You'd think I would be at the Zenith of happiness today, but for some reason, I couldn't decide on a Z post until the last minute.  So I decided to end the Challenge with a post about the man most associated with the iconic TV show The Twilight Zone, actor, screenwriter, producer, Emmy award winner, and narrator Rod Serling.

But, wait!  Haven't I blogged about Rod Serling before?

Yes, I have.  But please bear with me.  And yes, I know that Rod Serling's name doesn't have a Z in it, but, for me, I will always associate him with The Twilight Zone. So, Z for Zoned it is.

Some of my posts about Serling:

Zone of Twilight 

Revisiting the Twilight Zone

A Spring Tour Through the Twilight Zone

Rodman Edward Serling was born in Syracuse, New York on Christmas Day, 1924.  He and his family moved to Binghamton in 1926 and he grew up on the West Side of Binghamton, New York.  His father owned a kosher meat market in Binghamton.

His boyhood home on Bennett Avenue is a private residence and not open to the public, and I am not including a picture (although you can see it in the article I linked to).

But these are pictures, taken today, of the junior high (now called West Middle School) he attended in Binghamton.

Here's another view of the school.

His childhood seems to have been rather idyllic. He spent many happy hours in a neighborhood park called Recreation Park, which had (and still has) a historic carousel installed in 1919.  Happy children still ride it each summer, at no charge.

 

Recreation Park Carousel June 2013  Hard to see, but figure on the right is Rod Serling

Upon graduation in 1943, Serling enlisted in the military and was plunged into combat.  He served three years in the Philippines and his combat nightmares never left him.

Serling returned after the war a changed man, like so many veterans.  Some of the darkness in his life came through in various Twilight Zone scripts, but so did the longing for the happiness experienced in his childhood neighborhood.  One such episode, the fifth episode of the Twilight Zone series "Walking Distance", is considered one of the greatest shows in network history.

His wife's family  had property in the small Finger Lakes town of Interlaken. As an adult, Serling's production company was called Cayuga Productions. (Cayuga Lake is one of the Finger Lakes).  Although Serling had moved to California,he and his family returned to the Finger Lakes/Interlaken area for vacations.

It was there that, in June of 1975, Serling suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized first, in an Ithaca area hospital, and later in Rochester, New York. Eventually, he died during open heart surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester.  He was only 50 years old.

Now that we are at  the end of our April wanderings, I want to bring you to one final destination, Interlaken, New York, a small town in the Finger Lakes, and to its cemetery.

There, you will find the simple graves of Serling and his wife, Carolyn.

And, near the cemetery, you will find one last thing, if you come in the summer. You might just recognize this cornfield if you are a Twilight Zone fan.

A cornfield.

It's a good life.

Thank you for your readership during the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.  I hope you will keep reading my blog because I've enjoyed having you come along on my virtual April trip.