“The Clubhouse”
Original Air Date: November 29, 1957
Writers: Connelly & Mosher; Story by Lydia Nathan
On a rainy day, Beaver and Wally have nothing to do. Beaver suggests playing or trading marbles, but that idea is shot down. When Wally’s friends arrive, they suggest the same thing and so they do it. While playing marbles, Beaver suggests they build a clubhouse, that idea is ignored until Eddie suggests it and so, after the rain, that’s exactly what they do. There will be dues for anyone joining the club and 8th graders will be charged $1.00 and 2nd graders like Beaver will be charged $3.00 to join. That’s when Beaver goes to work raising the money.
In the park, Beaver finds his inspiration in a down on his luck man named Pete who wears a sandwich board and charges for advertising (and smokes cigarettes, as seen above). Beaver decides to sell advertising too. Pete says that Beaver could make some money but he has to have a lot of inspiration to keep going instead of sitting down. Beaver creates his sign and after finding out the local bridge he spits off of, because he is a resident of the city, belongs to him; he decides to charge people ten cents to have the opportunity to spit off of it themselves.
Beaver rakes in the money from bridge spitters and advertisers, and at the end of the afternoon, he’s sitting on the same park bench where he first met Pete who soon arrives and sits down asking how well Beaver has done. Beaver counts his money and says he made $1.75. Pete sits down alongside Beaver and proceeds to tell him a sob story about his daughter Jasmine and how his family won’t have anything to eat. Feeling bad for Pete and his family, Beaver, without much thought, turns over his hard earned cash so Jasmine could have some food for supper.
Have you ever heard a sob story? Have you ever been taken by people you knew were telling you a tale so they could probably just go out and get another bottle of whiskey or buy cigarettes. Years ago, my wife used to work in our church food pantry. She would help dispense food to many people, some of which drove better cars than her, people she’d see smoking, families she knew to be lying because they discussed fake addresses right in front of her. She didn’t argue with them about their right to receive food. She was there to give.
This episode, early in the series, shows social ills of the day, but still included humor. Leave it to Beaver did that on more than one occasion and always did a fine job in doing so. This is one of the best episodes of season one. What did you enjoy most about The Clubhouse episode of Leave it to Beaver? Please leave your comment below.
