Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life (35 page)

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Authors: Frank Bank,Gibu Twyman

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BOOK: Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life
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Page 174
The sweetest.
The goodest.
The happiest.
Go-luckiest.
Bestest place on earth.
Mayfield.
Yep. I'm speaking of Cleavertown.
The place where the Cleavers raised their family. And the Rutherfords raised theirs, I might add.
Ok, so there might be an Eddie Haskell or two in Mayfield. But it still was the greatest town ever created.
So what if it was mythical?
So what if it was made-up?
So what if it was a figment of some writer's imagination who thought it up only to sell soap and keep a sitcom on the air for a few weeks out of the year?
It wasn't that way to me.
Mayfield was real.
Mayfield existed.
It existed in my mind and heart. And the minds and hearts of Hugh and Barbara and Jerry and Tony.
And millions of viewers each week, all the way through decades of syndication and movies.
You believed Mayfield was real, you guys out there in livingroom-land.
That's why you tuned in year after year, because you knew there was this America out there somewhere . . . maybe everywhere, really, maybe just as close as the trapdoor where you hid it inside your soul and your spirit.
In spite of overcrowding and crass commercialization and future shock and rampant crime and the great racial divide and poverty and hunger and voter indifference and the dumbing-down of education and recreational drugs and the national debtand in spite of painful irregularity, George Steinbrenner, unsightly blemishes, Dennis Rodman, daughters telling mothers which douche to use, offending underarm odor, the heartbreak of psoriasis, Tammy Faye, Don King and the male itchin spite of all these problems and plagues and pestilences upon all our houses, still. . . .
We still believe there is a Mayfield.
Or we want to believe it's real.
So Becka and I went to live in Mayfield.
We had only seen three Mayfields in our lives, basically.
One was Pittsburgh.
Two was Cincinnati.
Three was Kansas City.
 
Page 175
We went for door No. 3.
Kansas City, Missouri.
We moved there in 1993.
We loved every minute we were there.
Kansas City was Mayfield in so many ways.
Friendly people. People raising their families. People leaving each other alone. Easy-going people in a laid-back town. A rush hour that lasted about 14 seconds. Housing that was way-y-y undervalued.
The Royals. The Chiefs.
Good major league franchises on which to shower my neverending affinity and affection for sports.
The University of Kansas basketball just minutes down the road. One of the true blueblood college programs in sports history. Roy Williams, one of the great contemporary coaches, an honest-to-God legend-in-the-making.
Of course, I could continue to fixate on my beloved Dodgers and even more worshipful UCLA Bruins. And I did live and die with them from afar.
But the Jayhawks, Chiefs and Royals were enough to get a fix for my sports Jones.
Becka and I lived in your basic mansion in Johnson County, just across the state line on the Kansas side of metropolitan Kansas Cityone of the richest per-capita communities in the nation.
We were living in a nice, clean, unthreatening environment, safe from natural disasters (if you didn't notice the odd house or Auntie Em and Toto spinning by from one of the Midwest's notorious tornados).
Incidentally, I have hereby done my duty. It is mandatory when mentioning anything connected with Kansas, for there to be an obligatory reference to Oz and Toto and some ritual variation on the "we're not in Kansas anymore" line from the movie and stage play and all the rest.
National pundits and commentators and screenwriters and playwrights and funnymen just can't seem to get enough of these Toto jokes.
In fact, if the sum-Toto of all the Oz jokes about Kansas were laid end-to-end, they would almost reach across these comedians' big mouths . . . although not quite.
The average Kansan just takes it all in, noting the massive originality, cleverness and intellect it must require to come up with a Toto-Oz-Auntie Em reference for the 27 billionth time. The Kansan then rolls his or her eyes and, in quiet satisfaction, goes back to living in one of the coolest places in the country.
We had a great time in our four years in K.C., Rebecca and I.
I was a vice-president for a national brokerage firm with a branch located on the Country Club Plaza, one of the swankest, most stylish business-living-recreational areas you will find in the country.
 
Page 176
Anyone who hasn't discovered this gem is missing a huge, best-kept secret, a fountain-and-flower-bedecked district that rivals even Rodeo Drive in my estimation for chic, smart stores, cafes, watering holes and galleries, all ensconced in a distinctive Spanish Mediterranean architectural style and exquisite landscaping.
As I mentioned briefly before, I was on the local CNN radio affiliate with my "Frank Bank on Finance" program.
I had a blast and it was very well-received, if I do say so myself.
Anyone who knows anything about radio or the market knows Frank Bank ruled when it came to assessing econonomic conditions and passing along sage insights to listeners.
I know that sounds egotistical.
Probably is.
I'm sorry.
Hey, what am I gonna do, lie?
I was great.
What can I say?
The show not only goosed my brokerage business with Prudential, but it got me to knowing scads of Kansas Citians, which I found to be delightful.
Then there was the food . . . always a pretty important issue with metoo much so, if you listen to my doctors. Which I should.
But it was just too hard to resist. Kansas City is the barbecue capital of the world, pure and simple. It is at the head of the class and you can stop taking roll right there.
Gates. Bryants.
These are the two giants on which K.C.'s BBQ reputation is staked, and they are well-deserved. But there are a half a dozen or more that are also better than anything in any other city.
And I've driven across this great country more times than I can tell you. I know what I'm talkin' about.
When it comes to the feedbag, this comes straight from the horse's mouth. Mine.
If you're ever in Kansas City, I also highly recommend you take in Stroud's. This is a pan-fried chicken place that isn't just finger-lickin' good. It's elbow lickin'.
You're gonna be in some great goo up to your neck and you're gonna lap up every last drop.
But my feelings for Kansas City went much further than my stomach.
They went straight to my heart and soul.
I guess, as much as anything, I discovered in Kansas City that I'd always longed to live in Mayfield.
 
Page 177
I had been seeking Mayfield ever since I burned out on the Cadillac days.
Ever since the frenzy of the Hollywood Boulevard prowls and the Sunset Strip searches and the Haight-Ashbury forays and my ridiculous six-second marriage and my walk with the fame-and-name game.
All through that I had really been looking for the haven and refuge of Mayfield and trying to raise a family and trying to be a good neighbor and a good parent like Ward and June.
I didn't do that so well in my first marriage. Even though I felt like I tried and it lasted 15 years, I just didn't do a very good job as a husband.
We had two great daughters together, Julie and Kelly.
I was a liberal dad, but if you screwed up, you got the Ward Cleaver speech, what else?
I knew those talks by heart and I thought they worked well.
I just ripped it out of page 112 of the Father's Manual: "Hey, now, it's time to sit down, be quiet and listen."
But I didn't always pull it off as well as Hugh Beaumont. I'll admit that. I couldn't make my own June happy either.
But no hard feelings. We split.
And then I met Becka.
We had the most incredible affair. Better than any romance novel.
It started one night at a party in Tarzana.
And that was the night we went "Booiinng!"
I came around this corner and saw her.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
Bells rang and volcanoes erupted and violins played and here-to-eternity waves crashed around us.
The whole 99 yards, like in the movies.
That was us.
I saw Becka and, I don't know, there was either a look on her face, the way she movedsomething happened.
And I just went:
"Omigod.
"This might be the one for me."
And we just sat and talked and talked and talked forever and ever.
Becka said she felt the same when she saw me.
She felt kinda like a female me. And I kinda felt like a male her.
It just kind of laid in on both of us, and it was wonderful.
Before we bumped into each other, I was just sittin' at this party havin' a drinkI think I was watching either a baseball game or a football game on TV. It mighta been a baseball game.
 
Page 178
This was right around my 39th birthday and they probably had a dozen people over there.
It was kinda like what happened almost every night of the world in Tarzana.
Tarzana was this big social whirlwind. It never ended.
Every night someone had some soiree or get-together or dinner or barbecue or just-plain party.
Always.
Food and drink and whatever grass or appropriate drug was out. Which was the reason I looked down on the whole thing, because that wasn't my bag.
Literally.
I was flying straight.
I didn't like drugs.
And I didn't like the whole scene in general after awhile.
These parties were all about impressing each other with our status and our toys and our achievements and our baubles, bangles and beads.
That permeated our lives all the time.
Did I tell you the story, after my dad died?
My first wife and I had this big, long old house on Van Alden in Tarzana.
It was like a half-a-block long.
And my Uncle Al comes back from the cemetery. We had everyone come over to my house after the funeral.
My Uncle Al says, "I didn't know what house it was. All I saw was Mercedes-Benzes out front and Rolls Royces and Ferraris."
I said, "Well, that's how it is around here, Uncle Al."
And he says, "Well, I'm driving . . ."ah, hell, I forget what he was driving. But he made some comment about it . . . and about whatever his normal, puny little nondescript car was.
And you know what? I've never forgotten the idea behind that remark.
It was like, the pretentiousness of all of us in my neighborhood.
It was just totally '80s.
It was almost like seeing Michael Douglas in the movie "Wall Street" when he said something like, "This is the greed generation. This is the Me Generation. And greed is good."
I don't remember the exact line, but I remember the intent, if not content, of it.
We were all just plain greedy.
That was what was driving us.
And it was reflected, perhaps most of all, by the lemming-like accumulation of the cars we were driving.
I was caught up in that. I'm just as guilty of it as anyone.

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