"The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"

For my 200th blog post I decided to get some assistance from the legendary writer, Rod Serling.  He is best know for the television show, "The Twilight Zone" which aired from 1959-1964.  It is one of my top three favorite shows of all-time and the reruns can still be seen on television today.

In 1960, one of his most famous episodes ran, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street."  It's a story of Anytown, USA and the people who live on one street, Maple Street.  One day the electricity shuts off only on their street and as the neighbors gather outside, suddenly, different houses have their lights turned on and off.  Suspicion swirls around and one person after another gets picked on and accused of being an alien or having odd behavior.  The neighborhood becomes a mob and tragedy strikes when a man comes walking towards them in the darkness and is shot dead. That is when the reality of the situation hits the neighborhood.  The very final scene is a couple of aliens who have been somehow manipulating the lights and running an experiment that always comes to the same conclusion with human beings.

There are 2,000 people every month who move into the Myrtle Beach vicinity and of course tens of thousand of people in the country monthly move into a new neighborhood.  What would happen if a new neighbor was "weird?"  What if the house is mainly just inhabited by teenagers who smoke pot and drive new trucks that are noisy at all hours of the day and night?  What if they regularly have friends over and cars are parked all over the street although there's no parking allowed on the street? Questions could arise like, are they selling drugs, do they have a gun, and what is going on inside the house? Suddenly, people don't feel safe on their own block.  What if trash was being left on the property and suddenly a quiet neighborhood had completely changed?

Of course this is all hypothetical. (This is where Rod Serling would enter my blog to finish up.)

Rod: "Imagine that this neighborhood is really your neighborhood and you can see this unusual house and sometimes their inhabitants from your very window.  Could this be just a couple of teenagers being kids without respecting others, or, could this be your worst nightmare, a place you now live in....in The Twilight Zone."