Next Stop, the Trivia Zone

OK, so, a week ago I posted a blog entry titled "Time Enough at Last" and challenged my loyal readers (all, what, four of them?) to identify where I stole the phrase from. I got one very good guess, but no right answers, so the trivia points go unclaimed. (Oh, the humanity!) Since said post is soon to scroll off into the archives, and thus out of mortal memory, I thought I'd actually offer up the correct answer before I and everybody else forgot about it.

So. "Time Enough at Last" was the title of an episode of the original Twilight Zone. Burgess Meredith plays a mousy little guy who just wants to be left alone so he can read. But his wife won't let him read at home, and his boss yells at him for reading at work. As it happens, he works in a bank, so at some point he sneaks off and locks himself in the bank vault for a little private time with his poetry book, and, of course, that's when World War III happens (as it is so wont to do in the Twilight Zone). When he emerges from his nice, secure, apparently atom bomb-proof bank vault, everybody's dead, but there are enough books to be found in the ruins of the public library to last him forever (or at least until the fallout kills him, though the episode tactfully fails to mention that part), so all things considered, he's basically a really happy guy. "Time enough at last!" he burbles as he scoops up a nice fat work of literature and sits down to read in the ruins. Of course, this being The Twilight Zone, we've got to have more of a twist ending that that, so he then goes and breaks his glasses, and can't read a damned thing.

I always felt for that guy.