- Robert Sloan: Martin.
- Martin Sloan: Yes, Pop.
- Robert Sloan: You have to leave here. There's no room, there's no place. Do you understand that?
- Martin Sloan: I see that now, but I don't understand. Why not?
- Robert Sloan: I guess because we only get one chance. Maybe there's only one summer to every customer. That little boy, the one I know - the one who belongs here - this is *his* summer, just as it was yours once. Don't make him share it.
- Martin Sloan: Alright.
- Robert Sloan: Martin, is it so bad where you're from?
- Martin Sloan: I thought so, Pop. I've been living on a dead run, and I was tired. And one day I knew I had to come back here. I had to come back and get on the merry-go-round, and eat cotton candy, and listen to a band concert. I had to stop and breathe, and close my eyes and smell, and listen.
- Robert Sloan: I guess we all want that. Maybe when you go back, Martin, you'll find that there are merry-go-rounds and band concerts where you are. Maybe you haven't been looking in the right place. You've been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead.
- Rod Serling - Narrator: [Closing Narration] Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things, but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again. And also like all men, perhaps there'll be an occasion - maybe a summer night sometime - when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind, there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then, too, because he'll know that it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory, not too important really, some laughing ghosts that would cross a man's mind - that are a part of The Twilight Zone.
- Martin Sloan: [to his younger self] Martin, I only wanted to tell you that this is a wonderful time of life for you. Don't let any of it go by without enjoying it. There won't be any more merry-go-rounds, no more cotton candy, no more band concerts. I only wanted to tell you that this is a wonderful time for you. Now. Here. That's all, Martin. That's all I wanted to tell you. God help me. That's all I wanted to tell you.
- Rod Serling - Narrator: [Opening Narration] Martin Sloan, age thirty-six. Occupation: vice-president, ad agency, in charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloan. He perhaps doesn't know it at the time - but it's an exodus. Somewhere up the road, he's looking for sanity. And somewhere up the road, he'll find something else.
- Rod Serling - Narrator: [middle marration] A man can think a a lot of thoughts and walk a lot of pavement between afternoon and night. And to a man like Martin Sloan, to whom a memory has suddenly become reality, a resolve can come just as clearly and inexorably as stars in a summer night. Martin Sloan is now back in town. And his resolve is to put in a claim to the past.