Ward Cleaver was my great inspiration

Ward Cleaver was my great inspiration

http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/14/Opinion/
Ward_Cleaver_was_my_g.shtml
http://tinyurl.com/2thpd5

By Bill Maxwell, Times Columnist
Published February 14, 2008

What was the most important image in your life when you were growing
up?" a student asked me last year when I addressed a high school
honors class in St. Petersburg.

"It was Ward Cleaver's den in Leave It to Beaver," I said.

Ward's den/office always caught my attention. Here, Ward disciplined
his totally normal sons, Beaver and Wally, made telephone calls and
balanced the family checkbook.

I vividly recall the episode when Ward shared with his sons the joy of
reading Mark Twain and the lessons he learned about life from Twain's
books and short stories. In another episode, with Beaver and Wally at
his side, Ward read from Huckleberry Finn aloud. I imagined myself one
day doing the same with my children, which I did.

I learned a few years ago that Ward and June, the perfect wife, rarely
read anything other than newspapers and magazines. As a child, I
missed this fact. The image of that wall of books and Ward's frequent
allusions to the moral lessons he learned from books left me with the
impression that the Cleavers read voraciously away from the cameras, a
kind of enveloping reality.

Since then, my living space always has been a library/den. The
wonderful thing about having books around is they entice you to read
them. As far as I am concerned, a home is not a home if it does not
have books and, by the way, a globe.

[excerpted]

Fred:
I learned about my love of history from a show called "Time Tunnel". It showed two scientists who went from
one time zone to another in order to get back to their time. Great show and wonderful SFX.

Keith

Keith Lee wrote in
news
Fred:
I learned about my love of history from a show called "Time Tunnel".
It showed two scientists who went from
one time zone to another in order to get back to their time. Great
show and wonderful SFX.

I also need a special machine to get to another time zone.

On Feb 14, 2:36*pm, "Fred Goodwin, CMA" wrote:

"It was Ward Cleaver's den in Leave It to Beaver," I said.

Ward's den/office always caught my attention. Here, Ward disciplined
his totally normal sons, Beaver and Wally, made telephone calls and
balanced the family checkbook.

As I kid, I was not comfortable with Ward. Although he didn't yell or
spank, he gave the impression of expecting absolutely perfect behavior
and manners from the boys at all times and being very strict about
it. He also gave the impression of being rather formal, even when he
was telling the boys a story or "when I was your age". With him,
everything seemed to have a moral or life lesson the boys were
supposed to learn from. Nothing was fun or free spirited just for the
heck of it; everything had to have a worthwhile purpose. Did Ward
ever tell a joke just to tell a joke?

Wally dated regularly in that show, but it was portrayed very
strangely. Wally seemed to be doing it because it was one of those
things boys his age were supposed to do, not like that he got any
special enjoyment from a girl's company. Never any affection ever
shown. Most dates didn't work out very well.

An aside on how things change...
Toward the end of the show, when Beaver was in 7 or 8th grade, he took
a girl home from school and up to his room; June dropped off milk and
cookies for them. (The girl acted as if she was interested in Beaver,
but she really was into Wally and just using Beaver). Today parents
would not let a girl and boy of that age up in a bedroom alone.

On Feb 14, 3:28 pm, wrote:
On Feb 14, 2:36 pm, "Fred Goodwin, CMA" wrote:

"It was Ward Cleaver's den in Leave It to Beaver," I said.

Ward's den/office always caught my attention. Here, Ward disciplined
his totally normal sons, Beaver and Wally, made telephone calls and
balanced the family checkbook.

As I kid, I was not comfortable with Ward. Although he didn't yell or
spank, he gave the impression of expecting absolutely perfect behavior
and manners from the boys at all times and being very strict about
it. He also gave the impression of being rather formal, even when he
was telling the boys a story or "when I was your age". With him,
everything seemed to have a moral or life lesson the boys were
supposed to learn from. Nothing was fun or free spirited just for the
heck of it; everything had to have a worthwhile purpose. Did Ward
ever tell a joke just to tell a joke?

Wally dated regularly in that show, but it was portrayed very
strangely. Wally seemed to be doing it because it was one of those
things boys his age were supposed to do, not like that he got any
special enjoyment from a girl's company. Never any affection ever
shown. Most dates didn't work out very well.

An aside on how things change...
Toward the end of the show, when Beaver was in 7 or 8th grade, he took
a girl home from school and up to his room; June dropped off milk and
cookies for them. (The girl acted as if she was interested in Beaver,
but she really was into Wally and just using Beaver). Today parents
would not let a girl and boy of that age up in a bedroom alone.

I'm not sure you were paying full attention to the show. Ward was a
stereotypical authority figure, but he never showed anger at his sons.
He always made it clear that they were forgiven, and were given the
chance to make up for whatever tbey did wrong. Yes, it was a very very
old-fashioned show with the stilted type of dialogue one might expect
in a soap opera. Much like a high school play in some ways.
Ward did tell a lame joke in at least one episode I remember off-hand.
Wally's date scenes were painful. The writers really went overboard in
making every episode a sort of moralistic afterschool special type of
scenario. lol

wrote:

An aside on how things change...
Toward the end of the show, when Beaver was in 7 or 8th grade, he took
a girl home from school and up to his room; June dropped off milk and
cookies for them. (The girl acted as if she was interested in Beaver,
but she really was into Wally and just using Beaver). Today parents
would not let a girl and boy of that age up in a bedroom alone.
-------------------------------
It was shows like that on fifties TV that made me see the whole western
world as a lying degenerate mass version of the Jerry Springer show.

I have no respect whatsoever for this society's guilty pathological
antisexuality, its dishonoring disrespect of children's rights, shaming
of normal urges, and corrupt appeal to abnormal distorted urges, the
vicious inherent criminality of capitalism and its encouragement of
the very worst character defects in people.

Shows like that have always made me want to puke and shoot people.
Steve

Hugh Beaumont was an ordained Methodist minister while doing the show
and ran his own church,
I think that accounts for a lot of the moralistic tone of the show and
the way he portrayed Ward.
Many times that minister demeanor came out in the way he talked.

wrote:
On Feb 14, 2:36 pm, "Fred Goodwin, CMA" wrote:

Wally dated regularly in that show, but it was portrayed very
strangely. Wally seemed to be doing it because it was one of those
things boys his age were supposed to do, not like that he got any
special enjoyment from a girl's company. Never any affection ever
shown. Most dates didn't work out very well.

On one classic episode, Wally has a crush on the girl who works the
ticket booth at a theatre. He manages to get a date with her (if I
remember, Eddie Haskell actually set it up, as Wally got too tongue-tied
to hit on her himself). Beaver happens to see her in a beer joint (the
Beav was just walking by), but when he tells Wally this Wally goes
ballistic denying it, instead of realizing that he's in for a fun date.
The date starts with dinner at the Cleavers, and she tells them that
she's in beauty school, a lie. As they start out, she lights up a
cigarette, and offers one to Wally, who tells her that he's in training.
Instead of going to a movie (or whatever they had planned), she Wally
park. Then she tells him that now that she's made his parents like her,
she wants to make him like her, too. The audience is now shouting "All
right, Wally!!!", but Wally's such a cold fish that pretty soon she
suggests that they head to a place she knows, which of course turns out
to be the beer joint. Wally won't even make a lame excuse to get out of
drinking -- he just doesn't. Pretty soon she suggests that he run along.

--
Dan Clore

My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://tinyurl.com/3akhhr
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Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"

In article ,
Dan Clore wrote:

wrote:
On Feb 14, 2:36 pm, "Fred Goodwin, CMA" wrote:

Wally dated regularly in that show, but it was portrayed very
strangely. Wally seemed to be doing it because it was one of those
things boys his age were supposed to do, not like that he got any
special enjoyment from a girl's company. Never any affection ever
shown. Most dates didn't work out very well.

On one classic episode, Wally has a crush on the girl who works the
ticket booth at a theatre. He manages to get a date with her (if I
remember, Eddie Haskell actually set it up, as Wally got too tongue-tied
to hit on her himself). Beaver happens to see her in a beer joint (the
Beav was just walking by), but when he tells Wally this Wally goes
ballistic denying it, instead of realizing that he's in for a fun date.
The date starts with dinner at the Cleavers, and she tells them that
she's in beauty school, a lie. As they start out, she lights up a
cigarette, and offers one to Wally, who tells her that he's in training.
Instead of going to a movie (or whatever they had planned), she Wally
park. Then she tells him that now that she's made his parents like her,
she wants to make him like her, too. The audience is now shouting "All
right, Wally!!!", but Wally's such a cold fish that pretty soon she
suggests that they head to a place she knows, which of course turns out
to be the beer joint. Wally won't even make a lame excuse to get out of
drinking -- he just doesn't. Pretty soon she suggests that he run along.

Years later, the Beav went back to the beer joint and found her for
himself . . .

--
Star Trek 09:

No Shat, No Show.

"Justin Pate" writes:
Mistakes happen when people drink.

"Mistakes were made."

-Miles

--
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.