She was more than just June Cleaver

Barbara Billingsley has passed away at ninety-four. When you hear her named mentioned, you probably think of a beautiful, blond wife and mother, caressing her household with a satin touch.

She was June Cleaver.

June never descended the Cleaver staircase without first donning her legendary pearl necklace. Ms. Billingsley later recounted that she wore the famous accessory to hide a slight indentation in her throat, and just like that, an immortal image was created, worthy of a place in television lore next to Archie Bunker's chair and Arthur Fonzarelli's leather jacket.

Ward Cleaver, the patriarch of the Cleaver clan, would have been lost at sea without his able bride. As I wrote about in this post, Ward's only real tasks in life were grabbing his lunch out of June's manicured fingers as he departed for an unspoken, yet stressful job down at "the old salt mine," and returning to a five course dinner with his brood of hapless, yet lovable sons, Wally and Beaver.

"Sit down, dear. Here's the evening paper, and dinner will be served in fifteen minutes." June had everything under control. Ward's only remaining duty would be to discipline Wally for giving Lumpy a retaliatory wedgie that went awry, or scolding The Beav for using June's brassiere to raise some new tadpoles.

She'll forever occupy a squeaky clean world in shades of black, white and gray, but mostly white. I'll always think of her when I pour a glass of whole milk or see a woman gardening in her slacks. And, a lot like my own mom, she was there when her kids needed her the most, saying just the right thing.

But as indelible a mark as she's made on our lives as June Cleaver,  how many of us remember her performance in this scene from Airplane:



Versatile? yes. Classy and elegant? Definitely. Irreverent and hilarious? Absolutely, which makes me love her even more.

Rest in peace, Barbara Billingsley.

Aw, heck, you little goof

Tonight, my kids popped in one of the DVDs from our Season One box set of Leave It To Beaver. I used to love watching reruns (no, not original episodes) of the Beav, and back then, it didn't really register what an odd and anachronistic world those Cleavers inhabited. 

The show might as well have been named Beaver and Wally's Adventures in Caucasia. Seriously, everything on the show was white. All the people were white; one of Beaver's friends was even named Whitey. June's dress, pearls and valiums were white, or maybe an off-white, and I'm sure the local Mayfield Soda Fountain had every type of white ice cream: vanilla bean, French vanilla and, well, vanilla.

It was a man's world. Ward spent his days doing some mystery job at the office with the other guys, and came home to the lovely June, already stationed inside the door with the newspaper and a welcoming peck on his grizzled cheek . The boys referred to him as "sir." After June ratted out Wally and the Beav for whatever transgression they had committed that day, Ward served up the perfect solution/punishment, leaving June to marvel at his parental prowess. I'm sure he was equally talented in other, more mature arenas, but we weren't privy to any of that unwholesomeness. 

When the parents wanted to kick back on the weekends, June would sport some shorter heels, and Ward would slip on one of his many cardigans and some casual slacks. I'm thinking that maybe the underwear they wore on weekends wasn't starched and ironed, either.

But in spite of all the uptight, Cold-War-era propriety, the kids on the show kept things real. I'm sure that even in our current society, kids are still getting their heads stuck between iron railings, or giving their little brothers beastly haircuts, or developing knee-buckling crushes on their first grade teachers. And I think that's why I've watched that show over twelve thousand times.