something about the Leave It to Beaver episode, "Wally's Election"

In the Leave It to Beaver episode, "Wally's Election," a reluctant Wally Cleaver is nominated to run for sophomore class president against the oafish school bully, Lumpy Rutherford. Wally's and Lumpy's fathers, Ward and Fred, respectively, push their sons to campaign aggressively. The fathers are motivated, it turns out, by their own selfish ambitions. The episode's moral comes during Ward's confession to his sons in the final act.

Ward Cleaver: Oh, I guess its just all part of being a father, Beaver. Your boy makes the football team and you visualize him scoring touchdowns all over the place. He gets an A in mathematics, and you see him as an atomic scientist landing on the moon. Maybe you even picture him marrying the banker's daughter.

Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver: Gee, dad. I thought only kids had goofy dreams like that.

Ward: No, Beaver. Nope. Parents have their share, too. You see, as you grow older, you come to realize that some of the ambitions and dreams you had are just not going to come true. So, you begin to dream through your children.

Wally Cleaver: You mean Mr. Rutherford dreams through Lumpy?

Ward: Of course he does. I don't guess there's a father around anywhere who doesn't want things to be a little better for his children than they were for him.

When actor Hugh Beaumont, as Ward, says, "you come to realize that some of the ambitions and dreams you had are just not going to come true," Beaumont's delivery includes a slight, magnificent quiver. It is an efficient but effective line read—not a surprise from the ultimate and classic TV dad-actor.


Note: "Wally's Election" was the 19th episode of season 3 of the famous American TV series, Leave It to Beaver. It aired 6 February 1960.

something about "The Easter Parade" by Richard Yates

Richard Yates, sometimes my favorite American writer, drops us into the tragically ordinary lives of two sisters, Emily and Sarah Grimes. Emily is younger and somehow goes her own way; Sarah marries and disappears into a family. Sarah, whose husband is physically abusive, eventually dies of complications from alcoholism (the same fate suffered by her mother). Emily occupies most of the novella's narrative. She confesses, "I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life." Yates' fifth book, published in 1976, is characteristically poignant, uncomfortably intimate, and penetrating.

Notes:

• The Easter Parade opens with, "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce."
• Still have not read Revolutionary Road, but it is a damn fine movie.
• I read The Easter Parade in the Everyman's Library edition, 2009, which includes Revolutionary Road and the short stories from Eleven Kinds of Loneliness.