Saturday, September 29, 2007

Fifty Years of Leave it to Beaver

Can you believe it fellow boomers? It’s been 50 years since Leave it to Beaver first made its debut on television.

To commemorate this occasion, TV Land is holding a 50th year marathon of the show. The episode I’m currently watching (as I write this) is the one where Wally hosts a teenage shin-dig but doesn’t want to invite his little brother. Beaver gets upset and decides to sabotage the party. He does this before Wally has a change of heart---at the urging of his always neatly dressed mother---June Cleaver.

OK, I admit that, as a little black girl, I used to watch the “Beev” because he was a kid just like me. I never gave one thought to the fact that he (and his family) didn’t have any black friends or that his school environment was quite different than mine. His dad surely wasn’t like my dad. He didn’t go to work everyday wearing a suit and tie but I bet my dad worked HARDER than Beev’s dad and he did so for HALF the pay. The only time my mother ever wore pearls was to go to church and you would’ve never seen her cleaning the house wearing them in one of her BEST dresses.

How much times have changed over the past 50 years……or have they? Let's ask our kids.

1 comment:

Carine-what's cooking? said...

popping in! I'm scared to wear my pearls at all-let alone every day and to clean the house!
Boy have things changed! We now can't get by w/o things that no one even dreamt of 50 years ago. PC's, laptops, cell phones, wireles phones, tv remote controls, DVD's, etc.
Oh my, that's just the top of the list Bev.
And now-I'm going to go use an old-fashioned ice pack on my old torn scapula tendon.
take care.