From birth until almost 9 years old I was raised in the prototypical 50's suburban neighborhood in a pre-Silicon Valley San Jose. Our house was in one of the first post WW2 housing tracts marketed to all the returning vets, hungry to start a life interrupted. All the streets were named after military leaders from their just finished war. MacArthur, Patton, Halsey, Patch, etc. We lived on Hodges. My folks bought the house in 1947 for 12k. It is now appraised at 750k or so

The Clevelands lived across the street from us and were about as perfect a clone of the Cleavers from 'Leave it to Beaver' as one could get. Even the name was close and they had two boys about Wally and Beaver's age.

I used to watch the dad and his boys play catch in the front yard after he got home from work with great jealousy. My dad wasn't into sports or playing with his kids at all. I have no memory of even touching the man. I asked my mom one day why dad didn't play catch with us in the front yard. She wore the pants in the family and before you knew it we were out n the front yard with an old softball we had kicking around. I could tell by his unenthusiastic demeanor she had laid down the law. I was raised in a Matriarchy.

We tossed the ball a few times, dropping it each time we attempted to catch it. The Clevelands were throwing heat across the street with a hardball, mitts and baseball caps. I could hear the ball slap leather from our house. I threw a ball at my dad and it hit him in the head and started a nose bleed. Mr. Cleveland and his boys laughed at us. That stung. Ward Cleaver would have never done that. Me and my dad looked at each other and realized at the same time this would never work. That was the first and last day of our athletic bonding. From that time on it was kind of understood we would each go our own way and leave each other alone, and like everything in life, that had plusses and minuses....... 

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14Jeff LeBlanc, Tony Erba and 12 others