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When I mentioned Barbara Billingsley’s death last week to Liz, I said something about how June Cleaver always seemed so classy. Liz said, “It was a TV show,“ inferring that it wasn’t real life.

Well, it was just a TV show, but at the time her portrayal seemed very much like real life, and as I look back, it still stands more true-to-life any other sitcom mom portrayal in history. My mom didn’t wear pearls at home (that I can remember) and rarely wore heels either, but there was the same warmth, lack of cynicism, down-to-earth advice and warnings about nefarious individuals such as Eddie Haskell. In fact, June seemed very similar to some of my friend’s moms as well.

“Leave it to Beaver’s” '50s and early '60s nostalgia registers with me for other reasons as well. The innocence, for one, but like me, he had an older brother, had similar interests to mine and got in the same sort of trouble I found myself in. No, I never climbed a billboard and got stuck in a giant cup of coffee, but I did hit passing cars with crabapples – and got caught. He broke the car window and tried to cover it up. I cracked the glass in one of our French doors and tried to cover it up.

And as much as I continually tried my parent’s patience, they still tried to provide guidance and teach some lessons.

And like Ward and June, they probably hoped and prayed that I would never again do stupid things.

To no avail.

“Beaver” also had a host of other memorable characters; the great Hugh Beaumont; the afore-mentioned Haskell, one of the first psychopaths-to-be in the history of television; Fred and Lumpy Rutherford; and the unforgettable Larry Mondello and his oft-suffering mother, who seemed 60-years old. Oh well, I guess that’s what living with Larry with do to you. Larry spent much of the time complaining that the grownups were “hollerin” at him.

Extraordinarily tame by today’s standards, “Leave it to Beaver” is almost quaint now, the way a Norman Rockwell painting seemed even when I was growing up. But it captured a slipping-away time in an essential manner and had (and has) real resonance to the baby boom generation.

And especially to me.

Strictly 100 – Number 8: Leave it to Beaver.