I noticed that we often see the men of Station 51 and Wally and Beaver Cleaver, sitting down to a good meal at the firehouse station and the Cleaver family home, respectively.

Aside from the wholesome and delicious meal, we see the firemen and the Cleaver boys washing down their meals with milk. MILK!

Now, I can certainly buy the Cleaver boys enjoying milk, loaded with vitamin D, at dinner, but I just can’t buy seeing grown men, in their late twenties and early thirties, all drinking milk with their meals. Wouldn’t Captain Hank Stanley and his men be drinking soda, ice tea, water, anything, but milk with their meals?

I realize that the firemen could not be drinking a cold Bud or Heineken while they were on duty, but I think your milk-drinking days end certainly by the time you graduate from high school. Even when John and Roy are at the hospital, enjoying hamburgers and fries at the cafeteria there, the two guys are STILL drinking milk with that popular American fast meal. Do they still have milk, when they’re noshing down on a Big Mac and fries at McDonald’s or having a pepperoni pizza at the local pizzeria? Yuch!

Leave the milk-drinking to Wally and Beaver Cleaver and their unfailingly goody-two-shoes dad, Ward. But let firemen Gage, DeSoto, Kelly, Lopez, etc. down Coca-Cola like real American men!

Well, I'm 57 and have been drinking milk all my life, but not at supper. Only breakfast. But remember this was TV and back then, at least, networks wanted to show wholesomeness and in doing that, they showed they guys drinking milk!

I am unable to have milk with my meals, too much acid reflux. I wouldn't have lasted very long at Station 51.

Yes, I can see drinking milk when you’re having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, especially with the way that the rising inflation has made other luncheon meals so expensive over the last two years. Besides, I don’t think anyone would really enjoy having a Pepsi with a PB&J sandwich.

On LITB, there was an episode where June and Ward were away, so Wally cooked
hamburgers for himself and Beaver, with a side dish of potato chips. (Okay, but Wally really should have also had potato salad or macaroni salad as well.) However, the boys had milk to wash down those salty potato chips. Yuch!

I wonder if Chet Kelly served milk to the guys at Station 51, when he served them his world-famous hot chili for dinner? (I hope Chet had Pepto-Bismol on hand for John, Roy, Marco and the rest of the guys after THAT meal!)