Blue Collar: The Green Acres Elementary School Gang, By Rod Kackley

Blue Collar: The Green Acres Elementary School Gang 

By Rod Kackley

Green Acres Elementary School Playground May 1963

Blue Collar will be a work of historical fiction. My history. As I put together ideas for this novel in progress, I was searching for a genre, a category, that would best describe what it will be and the phrase 'historical fiction' fits that bill.

It is a creation of my imagination, but everything that happens in the book will be based on what I saw, experienced and lived through in a neighborhood filled with fathers who survived World War II and the Korean War, mothers yearning to be set free from their domestic duties, and children rebelling against everything both parents stood for, while Mom and Dad dreamed of college for the kids and hoped their offspring wouldn’t be starting families before they had a drivers’ license.

Blue Collar will tell the story of three Baby Boomers, born in 1955, who graduated from high school in 1973, just in time for the economy to collapse.

Their stories take place in Warren, Michigan, which was the fourth largest city in Michigan and definitely driven by the Big Three -- Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.

Part of the story will take place in Warren High School — built in 1929, expanded in 1965 and then in 1973 when some pipes broke, no one could find the original plumbing plans, so they just closed the bathrooms.

A perfect metaphor for the narrative of Blue Collar, Warren High is gone. It’s been morphed into a community center, complete with two, heated swimming pools and a bocci ball court.

The heroes of Blue Collar came of age in the late 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s. The world went through the Korean and Vietnam wars, and Richard Nixon. 

The 80s and 90s went by our heroes in a blur of child-raising, divorce and cascading disappointment. 

When the new century dawned, the American Dream had been pulled out from under them.

What will they do? That's the plot, the overarching narrative if you will, of how they fight back. Or will they give up? Surrender? Settle into their rest homes?

Hang on. The story of Blue Collar is just beginning.

To read free chapters of Blue Collar, come back to this blog or download my free app through Google Play or iTunes. I will be posting special, exclusive material on the app and this blog.

And feel free to pass along your memories from the days when the universe really stood for something. No reason they can’t be worked into Blue Collar.

I’ll appreciate the assistance.

Rod