10/20/2022
Leave it To Beaver, the Lost Episodes
The day Ward lost his job at the trust company was the beginning of a downward spiral at the Cleaver household and the many fine residence of Mayfield…A spiral that would end in tears for nearly all involved.
It was Ward's old, passive-aggressive friend, Fred Rutherford who threw him under the bus to Mr. Anderson at Corporate. Fred's attempt to cover up his own involvement in a money laundering scheme that grew out of some shady deals. What those deals involved, nobody really knows since nobody knew what Ward and Fred actually did for a living. Ward took the fall, which triggered a SEC investigation while Fred went scot-free (S7 E1).
June, who in better days, spent her time washing clothes, cleaning windows and, looking after Wally and Beaver, occasionally took a sip of Ward's bourbon, but never enough for him to notice and more out of curiosity than anything else…But now, with Ward around the house all day, the sips had turned into glasses and the glasses into one of those 40-ounce travel mugs with the straw and the spill-proof top, that she would hold in her right hand as she vacuumed with the left. As for Ward, he would sit in his office, old newspapers stacked around him, depressed with his own bottle, occasionally mumbling Fred’s name, as June drunkenly rammed the vacuum cleaner into the walls, the furniture and his legs.
With the situation deteriorating and Ward’s prospects looking bleaker by the day, Wally and Beaver were sent to live with their Aunt Martha, an arrangement that lasted but a few days as she once again tried to dress Beaver in that pair of old-fashioned short pants and cap (S1 E11). Within a week, they were relocated to Ward’s Brother’s place, Uncle Billy (S6 E26), where they were never heard from again.
The days turned into weeks and with no job prospects, and the SEC investigation hanging over his head, something snapped inside Ward’s mind. He took the Plymouth down to Abernathy and Potts Sporting Goods Store; the same store Wally and Beaver bought him that fancy hunting jacket with his name embroidered on it (S1 E19). Ward knew what he needed, and since there were no background-checks and he was nearly sober, it took but a few minutes for him to walk out with a 1962 C**t Government .45 1911 and 3 boxes of ammo…It felt good in his hand, he thought…taking him back to his Seabee Days of World War 2 (S2 E28)
That night the walls of the Rutherford household were painted shades of black and without getting into details, there would be no reunion shows for Fred or Lumpy, same for Ward, who’s serving two life sentences, plus 20. Fred’s wife, who wasn’t home that evening, survived and later remarried Gene Roddenberry, joining the crew of the Starship Enterprise. As for June, she still lives at 211 Pine Street on the Universal lot, in the now dilapidated house which once held so many promising memories.
At times, when the Universal-tour trolley comes by she appears with her many cats, trying to give kittens to the tourist.
