A few years back, when I was teaching Jack Finney’s story The Third Level in a section of grade 12, I put a question to the entire class: “If you get a chance to live in another time, which would you choose – past or future?” Ann [not her real name] put up her hand first. “Future,” she said. In Finney’s story, Charley chooses to go back to Galesburg of 1894. He loves those big old frame houses, huge lawns, and tremendous trees with branches roofing the streets. It’s a ‘cool’ place whose evenings were “twice as long.” Life was a relaxed affair. People had time to sit out in the evenings, sipping tea and playing music on their guitars. There would be fireflies all around. Peaceful world. Charley wanted that world. My question to the class was in relation to that description of an old world. “My father speaks about the horrors of his childhood,” Ann said. “There was poverty. Not enough food to eat, no proper clothes to wear, no vehicles to carry you… Who wants to go back there?” An
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