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Missing that Rod Serling connection Tom Mooney Remember When

Sunday February 07, 2010 | 12:00 AM

There were plenty of heroes to worship on TV a half-century or so ago.

Some of my fellow young folks, I’m sure, saw themselves as Wyatt Earp, facing down the bad guys and restoring order in Dodge City in just 30 minutes every week.

Who could resist the charisma of Elliot Ness, crashing his car through the doors of a prohibition-era warehouse, waving his badge and shouting “federal agents” as the bootleggers scattered?

Me? I wanted to be Rod Serling.

Remember the old “Twilight Zone” episodes, with the scenes that showed sci-fi author Serling calmly sitting at a cafe corner table, smoking and drinking coffee and making an occasional sardonic remark while the characters in the evening’s episode were running around having problems and jabbering at each other?

That was my ambition many years ago — to live life like the Rod Serling persona. I’d metaphorically stand or sit by, watching the passing parade of humanity and glory in my separation.

There were all sorts of practical applications. Maybe I’d become a political affairs columnist for the New York Times, opining from somewhere on Mount Olympus about the foibles of mortal men. Or perhaps I’d be the spectral and slightly amused voice narrating international diplomacy and silly dog tricks for Movietone News.

Well, as we all know, outside a TV script that you’ve written yourself, life generally doesn’t allow you to be that detached. Family, church, employers and the U.S. government have ways of yanking you out of that corner table, hooting at your monologue and making you spill your coffee all over yourself.

Early ambitions never really die, though. Some people say that as you get into your later years you look back and resurrect your childhood goals. Think 70-year-old retired bankers scaling Himalayan peaks or jumping out of airplanes.

But here’s a sad truth. If any of you out there ever shared my Serlingesque dream it’s probably too late to achieve it now. We live in an era that does its best to shrink your personal space and get you “connected.”

Twitter, Facebook, iPod, BlackBerry, text messaging, blogs. Who knows what other gizmo or practice I just haven’t heard of yet? All of them are designed to do one thing: open you up to the world.

Take them away from almost anyone younger than 40 and you’d have a revolution “But how can I stay in touch? How will everyone know what I had for breakfast/what I think of the Oscar winners/where I’m going next weekend/what my favorite color is?”

Sociologists are fond of talking about the so-called “digital divide” in America. It’s supposed to be a huge gap, mostly along age lines, between those who spend hours a day punching keys and those who do, well, almost anything else.

Actually, I think, the true divide has less to do with technological mastery than with philosophy. Some folks — like us failed Serlingites — don’t want to be “connected.”

When we see a movie, we don’t feel compelled to hit the computer afterward and tell a zillion people what we thought of it, unless maybe CNN’s paying us to do it. Because there aren’t many phone booths these days, I carry a phone, but only four people have the number.

Well, things could have been worse. Aging Elliot Ness wannabes are probably prowling the streets of Forty Fort, secretly hoping for warehouses full of illegal booze.

“Federal agents!” Heh heh — look at them run.