It is downright painful to hear that Leave It to Beaver first went on the air 50 years ago, on October 4th, 1957, on CBS—and to know that I was old enough to have been one of its most avid viewers.
I was 12—the same age as Wally when the show started—and I’d watch it, by myself, in a bungalow off route 66 in Amarillo, Texas.
Sounds sad, and it kinda was. I was in the Panhandle with my father, who was a partner-chef in a restaurant there, called Ding How (Cantonese for “very good”).
While the rest of our family stayed in Oakland, Calif., there we were in this little building behind the restaurant. While Dad cooked, I wandered around the place or retreated to the bungalow to do homework, listen to the radio, sing along with Elvis, and watch the Beav.
It was a squeaky-clean family show, but I liked the sharp comedy writing, the innocent edginess of Eddie Haskell, the lessons imparted in each show—sometimes by the Beaver’s exasperated but good-hearted parents; sometimes by the Beaver and Wally themselves.
A thousand miles from home, Leave It to Beaver gave me a sense of family—and a few laughs to boot.
In Texas, on the radio and in the jukebox at the soda fountain down the street from Horace Mann Junior High, I heard a wider range of music than I’d ever found in Oakland. There was more R&B and, not surprisingly, a lot more country. Sure, Elvis had spread the rockabilly sound, and Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins (“A White Sport Coat”) were on the national charts. But in Amarillo, I got to know lesser names like Marvin Rainwater, Buddy Knox, and Patsy Cline. The week that Beaver made its debut, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Everly Brothers were near the top of the charts.
That’s a lot of country for a pre-teen kid from California. Maybe that’s why my first book turned out to be Hickory Wind, about Gram Parsons, who’s widely credited with fusing country and rock in the ‘60s. He was a slick-talking charmer, an Elvis fan who had some of his magnetism. Women loved him, and men were more than a little envious.
Kind of like Eddie Haskell—with a guitar. .
