By the time you read this, it will be over. Apparently there was a one-time-only tribute on one of the obscure channels in the universe for the television show “The Twilight Zone.” Not the rebooted newer show of the same name, but the old “Twilight Zone” hosted weekly by its creator, Rod Serling, which ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963.

I decided to browse through what was available on YouTube and other nostalgia channels to see if the show held up after 60 years. The answer in my mind was no. Like so much of the rediscovered past, a fresh look offered only a bare glance at what defined mass popularity back then. In the early days of television there were no streaming services. We had the choice of three channels covering the three major networks and that was it. The result was, hit shows drew bigger audiences than today and were much more likely to create a national buzz the following day at work stations and water coolers across the country.

The creator of “The Twilight Zone” was Rod Serling, a handsome, short guy who was a chain smoker and never appeared on the small screen without a lit cigarette between his fingers. He had the sonorous voice of an all-night announcer on clear-channel radio. These short, half-hour dramas were enough to zap your imagination in the same stealthy way that comic books did – giving us our first taste of science fiction, time travel and other weird things.

Most of “The Twilight Zone” episodes ended with a neat turnabout. These shows had such an effect on boys of a particular age that, to this day, I can recall details as if I had watched the episode last night.

The original “Twilight Zone” episodes were like “Aesop’s Fables.” They all had obvious morals which fit the fear and paranoia of the 1950s. For example, a well-remembered episode entitled “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” shows a typical afternoon in a suburb or neighborhood disrupted by a power outage. The lack of electricity becomes serious as darkness falls and the residents begin to exhibit examples of anarchy and paranoia as the peaceful neighborhood is transformed into a mob of scared people given over to finger-pointing and turning against each other. The message: Don’t give in to fear.

Of course, the original seems dated because you don’t have the real Communist Red Scare hovering over you when the TV is off. You hadn’t yet dealt with the House Un-American Activities Committee. In real life, people’s jobs and family were ruined by rumor and fear and paranoia. Without the HUAC happening in real life, in the 1950s and 1960s, “The Twilight Zone” loses its ability to make you care. Just another spooky TV show. In real life we were told it was a dangerous world out there, some people were out to get us, to change the way we live, to take away our things and make us share what we got.

Remember “duck and cover”? Horror movies like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” had everyone looking under their beds each night, afraid they’d see a watermelon that would take over your being and make you into a zombie-like alien. Most people don’t realize how easy it is to instill a fear of watermelons in the public. Movies like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and television shows like “The Twilight Zone” are testaments that it may be working.