“Beaver’s” Stolen Bicycle Evokes Thoughts Regarding Muhammad Ali And More

Yesterday, I saw the last half of a “Leave It To Beaver” episode in which Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver’s bicycle was stolen.

Seemingly never wrong wrong, “Ward Cleaver,” played by Hugh Beaumont, who also directed the episode, was a bit humbled as having forgotten to register and insure the bicycle.

Wife June, played by Barbara Billingsley, who famously talked “jive,” in one of many hilarious scenes in the 1980 movie “Airplane,” had to comfort him.

Tangental department: The great Muhammad Ali, whom we lost 6 weeks ago and in a large sense 3 decades ago from boxing’s brutality, started boxing after his bicycle was stolen from him.

A policeman named Joe Martin began the process. I do not care about, nor usually note a person’s skin color, but in this case a white officer (Martin) helped a young black male (Ali, bless his soul would joke “who are you calling boy?!” if I inserted that word instead of male) and that turned out well (maybe boxing and I detest it, largely due to what happened to Ali and others, caused heartbreak but it did “key” Ali’s road to being a world figure).

If only police and black males, for that matter, all people could start helping each other again!  Minimum, stop hurting, and tragically in far too many cases, killing each other.

My green Raleigh bicycle was not as fancy as the one above, but would not it be great to be riding it again? “Look Ma, no hands!”