The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories by Rod Serling

sports cars, huh?”
    The attendant shrugged.
    “I’ll come back for the car later on.” Martin grinned. “A mile and a half—that’s walking distance!”
    He took off his coat and slung it over his shoulder and tramped down the road to Homewood, a little over a mile away—and twenty years later.

    Martin entered the drugstore and stood motionless near the door in the dark coolness. It was exactly as he remembered it. A narrow, high-ceilinged room with an old-fashioned soda bar on one side, a counter on the other. A wooden stairway that led to a small office off a tiny balcony. This was where Mr. Wilson, the owner, used to take his catnaps, Martin remembered. A thin little man with thick glasses wiped soda glasses and smiled at Martin across the fountain.
    “What’ll it be?” he asked.
    Martin looked at the posters on the walls, the old-fashioned hanging lights, the two big electric fans that hung down from the ceiling. He went to the counter and sat down. The five big glass jars of penny candy were just as he remembered them.
    “You still make great chocolate sodas?” he asked the man behind the soda bar. “Three scoops?”
    The man’s smile looked a little strained. “How’s that?”
    Martin’s laugh was apologetic. “I used to spend half my life in this drugstore,” he explained. “I grew up here. The one thing I always remember ordering—that was a chocolate ice cream soda with three scoops. And it was ten cents, too.”
    The little man looked at him quizzically and Martin studied his face.
    “You know,” Martin said, ‘you look familiar to me. Have I seen you before?”
    The clerk shrugged and grinned. “I got that kind of a face.”
    “It’s been a long time,” Martin said. “Eighteen...twenty years. That’s when I left—” Then he laughed at a collection of secret thoughts that crossed his mind. “I wish I had a buck,” he continued, “for every hour I spent at this fountain though. From grammar school right through third-year high.” He turned on the stool to look out at the bright, sunny street outside. “Town looks the same too.” He turned back to the little man. “You know it’s really amazing. After twenty years to look so exactly the same.”

    The little man in glasses fixed his soda and then handed it to him.
    “That’ll be a dime.”
    Martin started to fish in his pocket, then stopped abruptly. “A dime?” he asked incredulously. He held up the giant, richly dark glass. “Three scoops?”
    The soda jerk laughed. “That’s the way we make ‘em.”
    Martin laughed again. “You’re going to lose your shirt. Nobody sells sodas for a dime anymore.”
    There was a moment’s silence then the little man asked, “They don’t? Where you from?”
    Martin started to spoon down some of the chocolate ice cream. “New York,” he said between gulps. “Hey, you make a great soda!”
    The little man leaned on the counter with his elbows. “Taste okay?” he asked.
    “Wonderful.” He finished the ice cream and slurped up the last of the soda water. He grinned. “Like I never left home. That was great.” He turned to scan the room. “Funny,” he said, “how many memories you connect with a place. I always thought if I ever came back here, it’d all be changed.”
    The store looked back at him. The counters and shelves and posters and lights. The electric fans. They looked back at him like old friends. “It’s just as if—” Martin said thoughtfully, “—as if I’d left yesterday.” He got off the stool and stood twirling it. “Just as if I’d been away overnight.” He smiled at the soda jerk. “I’d almost expect Mr. Wilson to be sitting up there in the office and sleeping away his afternoons just the way he always did before he died.”
    He didn’t see the soda jerk start at this.
    “That’s one of the images I have,” he continued. “Old Man Wilson sleeping in his big comfortable chair in his office up there. Old Man Wilson—may his soul rest in