Valley melting pot

Take a walk down the 20100 block of Marilla Street in Chatsworth and you see kids playing dodgeball while their parents hover over barbecue grills and set up picnic tables for an early start to the Fourth of July. Dennis McCarthy in the Daiily News.

The 12-home, tree-lined, cul-de-sac built in the early 1960s has the all-American feel of the Cleavers' old neighborhood in the TV series "Leave It To Beaver."

But the Beav and his brother, Wally, and their parents, Ward and June, never lived on a block like this.

And that's too bad, the people on Marilla Street say. They would have been so much richer and wiser if they had.

"I grew up on this street in the '60s when it was all white," says Chuck Bunnell, who now lives with his wife, Beth, in his parents' old home.