At some point during its six-year run, from 1957-63, my father was offered a position as writer for the TV show Leave It to Beaver. I can’t be more specific since he never thought to mention anything about it. Deductive logic, however, would suggest that he did in fact turn it down.
The show, in a very real sense, was emblematic of the era, featuring a happy suburban middle-class family living in a stable post-WWII society. It was the Boomer heyday. We grew up on this stuff. And though it may appear today overly sentimentalized, even corny, at the time it fit with the reigning zeitgeist of an emergent, dynamic, civic-minded, and, yes, patriotic America.
The show reflected the happy aftermath of the heroic struggles borne by our parents’ generation during the Great Depression and World War II. Life was good. Society and its institutions had survived and appeared strong. The future looked bright.
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