Willoughby South

That's Mr. Gart Williams looking longingly at the sign identifying a station stop that wasn't to be found on the 1960 New Haven Railroad line, but instead existed in that special place known as the Twilight Zone.

Nearly half a century has passed since I first thought how pleasant it would be to make "A Stop at Willoughby," as that particular episode was called. Willoughby was a "peaceful, restful place, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure," according to the conductor on a train that had passed through the time tunnel back to 1881.

This episode from the program's first season was acknowledged by its creator, the late Rod Serling, as his favorite, and indeed it remains one of the best remembered and most popular of the 156 episodes. Why?

Well, the conductor said it all, didn't he? When all is said and done, modern life with all its empty thrills and narcissistic vacuity goes by in a blur, and the cup is nearly always half empty. The closing narration expressed the nostalgia for a Willoughby that exists within us all: "Willoughby? Maybe it's wishful thinking nestled in a hidden part of a man's mind, or maybe it's the last stop in the vast design of things, or perhaps, for a man like Mr. Gart Williams, who climbed on a world that went by too fast, it's a place around the bend where he could jump off. Willoughby? Whatever it is, it comes with sunlight and serenity, and is a part of the Twilight Zone."

Traslasierra, on the other hand, is sunny and serene and most definitely not part of the Twilight Zone, though it has that other-worldly feel to it that one can still find in rural areas largely passed by as the Urban Ambition Express barrels past. This is Catacombs country, an enclave of slowing down to a walk and living a life of full measure.

The Southern Cone is filled with places like this; climates and topography vary, crops grown are different, modcons may be more or less, but they have in common a pace that has been lost in the so-called developed world. It makes for a good "last stop," a place in which one can set down roots and live a life in large measure insulated from the tumult of a world in growing economic distress and social discontent with excessive political control, a place in which social engineering has yet to tinker much with the time-honored traditions of the folks who call these places home.

Better Willoughby than Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 fantasized dystopic technocratic dictatorship in which society is directed by a slow-talking computer named “Alpha-Soisant” with a whiskey-and-black-tobacco-broken, bad-barbiturate-habit voice that explains to secret agent Lemme Caution that everything is relative, governed by probability, and the word “love” is without meaning.

Are you holding a thirty-year commutation ticket to Alphaville?

Before your ticket gets punched one too many times, you might consider getting off at Willoughby South. We'll be waiting for you at the plaza.