"Excuse me, ma'am, I speak Jive"

I start today's entry with quite possibly the funniest and most unpredictable line used in movie history. It was uttered by none other than Barbara Billingsly, the actress who played the mother of Beaver and Wally Cleaver, pearl wearing wife to Ward Cleaver, on the fifties show titled "Leave it to Beaver". I'll explain the set up to maybe the one person who has not heard of or ever seen the show by telling you that the show was about as "white bread" of a show as has ever been seen on TV. I mean, Ward and June didn't sleep in the same bed, didn't do the tongue dance when they parted company in the mornings or reunited in the evenings. There was never ever any hint of sexual impropriety or sex at all for that matter. Save for the fact that Wally and Beaver weren't portrayed as immaculate conceptions, you'd a thought they had actually been dropped down the chimney by the baby-toting stork himself. Two grown boys delivered from the land where the dance of the two-backed beast isn't required for conception. This is the straight laced mom June Cleaver was made out to be, and she was a standard by which all mothers were judged for a number of years. Right or wrong, every kid somewhere deep down inside wanted a mom like June Cleaver at one point or another in their life. I know I did.

I'll take an exit here to share with you the fact that I, indeed, speak Jive. As a matter of fact, I usually list it as a second language when I fill out a job application or list my accolades on a resume. I can speak it like a second language. It is a cool and delightful (not a word I use very often-this may be the second time ever) take on the English language. Unlike ebonics, the evolution and bastardization of our native tongue. I'll not go into any more detail about it, save to say its a lazy man's way of speaking Jive. Jive, on the other hand, was an ethnic take on standardized words, altered slightly so Mr. Whitebread didn't understand exactly what was being said. I don't hear it spoke much anymore except by the old school Black men and dudes from my generation of the African-American persuasion. And, yes, I speak it fluently. I was the last white kid to leave the West-End of Atlanta. "Madea'", as portryed by Tyler Perry, has said in numerous Madea' movies and I quote; "Don't fuck with me, I'm from the West-End". And black folks know what I am talking about. I mean I lived off Avon Avenue, halfway between Lee Street and Cascade road, as "middle" of West-End as you could get. The road I lived on, Graymont Drive, would take you to the back gate of Fort McPherson, right in the heart of beautiful downtown West-End. OK, there was no downtown, but it was as deep into the notorious (and it was notorious when I left in 1969) neighborhood as you could get.

Now June Cleaver, again played by Barbara Billingsly, saw the end of her acting career when "Leave it to Beaver" closed out it's run out in 1963 when I was three years old. The show was and still is on the air fifty years after it went out of production. I won't lie to you and say I remember seeing any of the episodes when they first aired, but I have seen every episode since. "Leave it to Beaver" had twenty-five episodes in its last season, a regular mini-series by today's standards, with 234 total episodes produced in it's six year run. That's unheard of these days, with the magic number being 100 for syndication purposes, meaning big money. Ms.Billingsly was shoe-horned into being Mrs.Cleaver for the rest of her life. The character was, ans still is, as Iconic as it gets. It's hard to believe that Ms. Billingsly almost passed on the role of June Cleaver, but thank you God she didn't. She didn't do much more acting after that show, save for a cameo or two and a sequel to "Leave it to Beaver" where Beaver is divorced and trying to get custody of his three kids. I never watched any of those shows, wanting the problems Beaver got himself into as a kid to stay just that, uncomplicated and innocent, and all solved inside of a thirty minute show, including commercials. That all changed when a movie titled "Airplane" came to theaters in 1980, and Mrs. Cleaver cemented her status as the coolest mom in the history of history. Movies or otherwise.

I learned jive as a survival mechanism. My family moved to the West-End of Atlanta after the now Hartsfield-Jackson Airport political thugs showed up at my mom and dads door, informing them to either sell their property for airport expansion to the city of Atlanta, or have the property condemned. It was politics at its growth oriented best. My dad took the offer and moved us to 1178 Graymont Drive in 1964. I lived in a restricted neighborhood back then, meaning blacks couldn't move into it as rumor had it. That changed a few years later with the civil rights movement and liberals insistence on forced busing, meaning black and white kids would be bussed into areas other than the school districts they lived and paid taxes in. It was a new word back then and it was called integration. What it meant to me was the threat of forcing white kids and black kids to go to school together meant all my friends moved away inside of six months. I was moved from Arkwright Elementary, within spitting distance of my house, to I.N.Ragsdale Elementary, three miles away. And did I mention there was NO bus to haul us unwillingly to a different school? I walked it every day, by myself, because every white kid I knew was gone. I was the last white kid on my block. What that meant was I learned how to fight, and a whole lot. What it really meant was I got my ass kicked in most every day for my lunch money. I heard someone say that hunger is the best flavoring, and let me tell you, that is true. I starved a lot until I became better at "scrapping", Jive for fighting. When I became more pugilistic-ly proficient I started eating my lunch every day, instead of getting "my lunch ate" for me-also Jive for getting my ass kicked. It was then, after I whipped a few of the same asses that were whipping mine, that I was invited to be an honorary brother. I listened and ciphered out the lingo, figuring out what meant what, and what inflections went where and what words were slightly altered to mean the same thing, and sometimes have two meanings, depending on the circumstances.

I became quite proficient at Jive. On the days when I'd get to go to work with my dad at the Post Office, not the local P.O., but the bulk mail centers where he supervised an entire crew of black folks, the Jive would fly around like bees on honey. My dad had two assistant supervisors under him, both black, and when my dad would hand out daily duties, he'd give his two assistants their marching orders and they'd relay the orders to the floor workers in fluent Jive. My dad remarked to me once that he had no idea what they were saying, but whatever it was translated to the exact orders he'd given. I was maybe eight or nine at the time and I knew exactly what the assistant supervisors were saying to their co-workers. I told my dad exactly what the exchange was and the two assistants were amazed, and immediately began speaking Jive to me. The others on the floor also came over, slapping fives with me and telling me how cool they thought I was. I explained my honorary Home-boy status and how I acquired it, and they appreciated it a lot. I think it even helped my dad out with race relations, it being so strained back then in the hippy sixties of my youth. I was happy to help out my dad, in any way possible. I just never dreamed it would be that way.

Fast forward to 1980, I'm in college at Troy University with my date and we are watching "Airplane" on the big screen. It was a hilarious take on the Big Movie productions popular in the day, but campy and a bit baudy, full of gutter college humor and right up my alley. It was about a plane flight that went completely south, the pilot and co-pilot expiring from the fish dinner they chose for nourishment, and the ex-fighter pilot who reluctantly saves the day all while he patches things up with his ex-girlfriend who is a stewardess on the same trip. Midway through the flight, there are two Home-boys as passengers, and one chose the fish also and was having belly cramps, trying to explain to the stewardesses, in Jive, what the ailment was about. When the two began their exchange, the group I was with all looked at me for interpretation, seeing I was the dude from Atlanta. I started to tell them what was going on when it happened, and history was made.

"Excuse me ma'am, I speak Jive' uttered by none other than June Cleaver herself. I sat there for a split second, and busted out laughing so loud, that I had to excuse myself from the theater. I laughed about it for another thirty minutes and still laugh about it today, every time I see the movie. It seems that speaking Jive has served us both well over the years.

June Cleaver, the epitomy of cool. Now who would have ever thought those two things would ever be uttered in the same sentence?