Blue Collar is the story of the people I grew up with in Warren, Michigan, all in the class of 1973.
It is also the story of people like Kevin Kalmes, a woman who lost her job because Kevin (yes, her name is Kevin) was doing what she was told to do.
Kalmes’s entry into the shadow economy came after losing her job of 13 years as a production manager for Paris Presents, a distributor of bath and beauty products in Gurnee, Ill.
Kalmes says she oversaw the assembly of “all those gels and lotions and refreshers and gift baskets.” She even flew to China to train workers in a factory.
On March 17, 2010, her job was outsourced to the people she’d trained, she says. The company confirms Kalmes worked there.
What she doing now? This 61-year old suburban Chicago woman has been doing what she was trained to do. Kalmes is selling things out of her basement, and her friends’ homes, on a website they call “The Little Shop of Hoarders.”
These are the people you will meet in Blue Collar, the people of the Baby Boomer generation who have had the protective blanket their parents called the American Dream, ripped out from under them.
Blue Collar is scheduled to be published in the autumn of 2014. However, you can start reading it now. Just click here for Chapter One, then go to Chapter Two, Chapter Three and read more of the back story on this blog, or on my free app for your iOS or Android devices.
—-Rod Kackley
Sometimes Things Break: The story of a middle-aged man who should know better, and a teenage girl who wants it all. Read More
For more of Rod Kackley’s books, articles and essays, please click here or download the free Rod Kackley app for iOS and Android devices through Google Play or the App Store.
