Question for the Old Folk

[rolanni]

'way back in the Dark Ages, when I was young and impressionable and watched television, there was a show called "Leave it to Beaver." It was goopy and sappy (though maybe not quite as goopy and sappy as, oh, "The Donna Reed Show" or "Father Knows Best," or even "The Real McCoys" -- but those were Classics), and focused on the doings of the Cleaver family, which consisted of a ditzy-but-compassionate Mom (June), a wise-and-firm-but-compassionate Dad (Ward), older son Wallace (Wally), and younger son Theodore (The Beaver). In addition to the family, we had two other recurring characters: Beaver's buddy, Lumpy; and Wally's buddy, Eddie Haskell.

Eddie was not a nice kid: he was hypocritical, manipulative, dishonest, and spiteful -- for starters -- and embroiled Wally in all kinds of trouble. This was his purpose in the Plot, if I may be so bold, of the Beaver episodes -- to introduce problems which Wally would then have to Rise Above/Solve (sometimes with Dad's help, sometimes not) and thereby Grow. I have no problem with Eddie's place as a Plot Device.

But.

I wonder -- and not for the first time -- about the relationship between Wally and Eddie. It was made clear that Eddie was skilled enough at manipulation that he was able to pull a certain amount of wool over the eyes of the firm-but-compassionate parents. But Wally, though naive, wasn't an entire dunderhead. He knew Eddie wasn't a good kid; he knew his life would be a lot less trouble-free if it lacked Eddie's influence and yet -- he continued to hang out with him, to confide in him and to bail him out of his worst scrapes.

So, today's question, for fifty bucks and the blender: Why? What was the glue that held Wally and Eddie together?

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

It was clear that Eddie thought up fun things to do--the problem was, he also thought breaking rules was fun. The atmosphere was a kind of TV-whitewashed match for the fifties, boomer atmosphere: you played with the kids on your block because they were there everyday, even if you didn't particularly like them. And a lot of what was going on did not get reported to the parents--it was a completely different atmosphere than today's parent-sponsored everything, right down to getting to school each day. In those days the parents said go outside and play, and we went. And didn't come back until dark, or whenever the command was.

[gingerwood.livejournal.com]

Why? What was the glue that held Wally and Eddie together?
My guess would be proximity. It's been a looooong time since I saw the show, but IIRC Eddie lived pretty close. There's also the possibility that Eddie had some qualities (at least to outside eyes) that Wally wished that he possessed. Eddie seemed amazingly self-confident and only Eddie decided what Eddie was going to do. Wally was a pretty wishy-washy guy as a teen, so those traits may have seemed pretty attractive.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Can't help you. I never watched the show.

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

Well, I always cast my brother as Wally, and Eddie as Gibbs Connors. And I'd say the reasons my brother and Gibbs hung out were:
1 - the only kids of the same age in our neighborhood who were available (other kids on sports teams or with after-school jobs weren't available)
2 - he was fearless (other kids would refuse to try new things because of what might happen)
3 - parents pushed them together (the snowjob on the parents was such that they actively encouraged my brother to hang out with Gibbs, and it was easier to acquiesce than to explain to people unwilling to hear it why he wasn't nearly as nice as they thought he was)

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

I agree with sartorias - one did a lot of stuff with neighbors because they were there & avoiding them (or shunning them) had all sorts of consequences. Parents were friends or at least friendly, neighborhood spats were and are a bitch, schoolyard fights, non-actual-fighters take sides, et cetera.

[moon-happy.livejournal.com]

Back then, I agree that proximity was the strongest glue. There's a loyalty factor, too. If Eddie had been the brother, we wouldn't be questioning Wally's loyalty. I say such loyalty was a big factor in neighborhoods where kids began playing with each other as toddlers, and 15 years later they're still next door.

Eddie and Wally

[joythree.livejournal.com]

We moved a lot when I was a kid in the fifties. The first order of business was to run to all our new neighbors, introduce ourselves, and discover names, age, and gender of any kids in the house. I remember playing in creeks up to a couple of mile away from my home. We climbed trees, explored, played games, etc. Idea kids -like Eddie- were fun sometimes, and trouble others. But the only child my three brothers and I avoided was one boy named Oscar. In hindsight he was probably being abused at home and he would take it out on others. At the time, Oscar was known as a bully and all the kids shunned him. I can remember two times that my brothers tried to play with him. One they enjoyed, the second (and Last) he tried to get them killed/insured on a steep hill. He lived very near us and we all had to walk home from school at the same time. A major consideration was to plot our route home safe from his daily ambushes.