Class of 1967 is a legal thriller tracing the coming of age of four teenagers in sleepy Salem, Oregon whose idyllic lives are monopolized by baseball, cars and relationships (in that order). They teeter-totter over tough choices they face because of the allure of major league baseball, the War in Vietnam, an unplanned pregnancy, the â60s drug culture and the pressures of being African American in a small white Protestant town. Their worlds are forced to expand from Harlem to Hanoi and their lives and freedom hang in the balance. If you love baseball, ever dreamed of going to Woodstock and being part of the Summer of Love or have had nightmares about fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Class of 1967 should make your reading list.
Class of 1967 is a legal thriller tracing the coming of age of four teenagers in sleepy Salem, Oregon whose idyllic lives are monopolized by baseball, cars and relationships (in that order). They teeter-totter over tough choices they face because of the allure of major league baseball, the War in Vietnam, an unplanned pregnancy, the â60s drug culture and the pressures of being African American in a small white Protestant town. Their worlds are forced to expand from Harlem to Hanoi and their lives and freedom hang in the balance. If you love baseball, ever dreamed of going to Woodstock and being part of the Summer of Love or have had nightmares about fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Class of 1967 should make your reading list.
CLASS OF 1967
Chapter 1Â Â Â Â Â Â Salem
It was all crashing down so quicklyâa rapid eruption with no time to run, hide, or be heard above the deafening rumble. Only a week earlier, I had the promise of a Norman Rockwell family life. I had a terrific and gorgeous wife, an amazing young son, a future I was more than passionate about, the promise of future adventure travel in faraway places, and weekends filled with frequent barbeques, camping trips, and baseball games with our families and closest friends. But my meddling, however well intended, looked like it would bring my world down around me and everyone I had ever cared for.
I was numb and seeing flashes of light, and my stomach churned and kicked up a dormant acid reflux. I couldnât sleep for more than an hour or two at a time, as unexplained pain seemed to be playing its own cruel game of hide and seek in every organ in my body. I lacked any real appetite, had a persistent dry mouth, making it hard to swallow, and I had an almost obsessive need to move my body in what seemed like involuntary movements. Could life really be that cruel, and at such a young age?
This is the feeling you get when you discover something has gone horribly wrong in your life. Inside you hope and pray it will not be as bad as your imagination pictures, and very deep inside you know everything will work outâand in some way, it always does. At a relatively young age, I had had more than my fair share of those occurrences: a baseball through Mr. Thornâs front window, a broken wrist from trying to steal candy from a vending machine, sneaking out bourbon from Dadâs cabinet to drink with my buddies (only to get caught red handed when Dad had an unexpectedly short day at the office), and being discovered under the bleachers during a high school football game with Amanda Hoss in an embarrassing (at least to Amanda) state of undress and with one of my appendages in her hand for all to see.
Eventually, the worry, anguish, or embarrassment always fades, the disaster is reduced or averted, and the pain heals. It ends up a distant memory rarely revisited. Those memories are only called upon when needed to teach a life lesson to a son, daughter, or someone in need or as a good reminder of hard lessons learned.
However, other than the possibility of waking from a very bad dream and finding life as it was before, it seemed there was no outcome that was going to be anything but horrific. My irreversible actions would certainly lead to irreversible consequences that could not be rationalized, justified, or corrected. There was going to be the worst kind of hell to pay, and I saw no miraculous escapeâthose escapes only happen in movies.
Renee and I had built a comfortable life together with our young son. We formally met at eighteen, and the attraction was instantaneous. We were inseparable and could not keep our hands off each other. We married almost two years later with a son on the way as we said our âI dos.â Our parents were disappointed, as it derailed our college and career plans for a while, and being married at age nineteen with a child on the way and a job that would not support a family of three was not wise planning; but we were intensely in love and could not see ourselves apart. It made absolute sense to us, if not to our families or closest friends. We did not feel trapped or stupid, nor did we regret the path we had chosen. Those early years were austere and at times stressful, but we were happy, and we faced those stressful times in lockstep together. In our minds, our relationship was impenetrable by any outside force. That was about to be tested.
We are both from Salem, Oregonâa small town in many senses, but also the capital of the state of Oregon and its second largest city. A great deal of the cityâs population is made up of government types: state senators, judges (itâs home of the stateâs appellate and supreme courts), and more bureaucrats than you can shake a stick at, peppered by a heavy dose of blue-haired senior citizens who moved to this somewhat sleepy town to retire. The Willamette River runs through the city, but most of the business is done on the east side of the river. On a good day, it is less than an hour from the stateâs largest city, Portland, but far enough away that housing prices and traffic congestion are less of an issue. The sidewalks roll up at five oâclock in the evening and, unless you are on campus at the small Methodist-run Willamette University, which does have fraternities and sororities, there is very little social activity after five oâclock beyond high school athletics, a movie, or dinner out at a modest local restaurant.
We both grew up in this conservative, church-going, law-abiding town with loving parents and siblings and a small group of very close and extremely loyal friends. Renee and I attended different high schools, so our paths did not truly cross until after we both graduated high school.
Baseball was the language of my youth. There were no true professional teams in Salem or even in Portland (the Portland Beavers from the Pacific Coast League was the most the state had), but my buddies and I loved the game and never hesitated to play by the streetlights and later by the headlamps of our cars, often long after sunset. It was the major social activity at our schools, and games were heavily populated not only by the players but, of course, the girls too. They hung around, sometimes to watch us play, but mostly to gossip, giggle, and flirt. Snow cones, popcorn, and candy from the canteen trucks at the fields brought us all together after the games, and our circle of friends grew very tight. There was not much else to want out of life.
I pitched for the North Salem Vikings; we proudly wore the red and black. Our in-town rival was the South Salem Saxons, which is where Renee went to school. My senior year we finally made it to the state championships. We beat Ontario 9â1 in the quarterfinals, South Eugene 6â5 in the semifinals, and outlasted Cleveland from Portland 2â0 in the finals. There was no better way to end my senior year than with that 1967 State Baseball Championship. I was at the top of the world that spring and summer.
My best friend Sam, Sam Carver, was my catcher. We lived a few houses away on the same street growing up, and his pops was our Boy Scout leader. Our summers, before girls of course, were consumed by baseball, Scout meetings, backpacking trips, and bike rides for hours on end. No one worried about where we were or whether we might be hurt or abducted. Beyond an occasional fistfight over a bad call, trash talk on the field, or whose girl she was, there was not much for our parents to worry about. Our fathers had certain expectations of us, no doubt greatly influenced by our church-going moms. We always, or almost always, seemed to meet them, even if just by the skin of our teeth. Their rules were few, but the consequences great for violating them. My mom was clever; she set up a lamp by the front door on a switch. She had a small clock plugged into the same socket as the lamp. When my siblings or I came home from a night out, we would flip the switch to turn off the light. It was only years later that we learned the clock stopped when the light switch was turned off, which is why our mom seemed to have the uncanny ability to always know when we came in after our curfew. For years, I assumed my mom stayed awake and did not sleep until we were safely at home. Never underestimate the cunning of a mother.
As we moved from grade school to high school, our priorities changed, and with those changes came increased expectations. I turned sixteen on April 4, 1965, and at 9:01 a.m. that day, I was at the Department of Motor Vehicles with Pops in tow to get my driverâs license. Sam, who would not turn sixteen for four more months, came along, but he was not allowed to ride in the car during my driving test. I was nervous but confident. After all, I was an athlete, popular in school, and a decent student, but I had something to prove and a reputation to protect, being one of the first kids in our class to get a license. All my buddies were anxious to have the freedom of a car not driven by their parents. My DMV tester went to our church. Dad and Mom knew him well from church and I just knew him as Mr. Jelder. We cruised up and down State Street, took a few detours through the side streets, and ended up back at the DMV office for a parallel parking test. No sweat. Mr. Jelder did not seem the least bit nervous as my ride-along. If you were a ball player in Salem, you were a bit of a celebrity around town, which had its advantages. It did not hurt my driving test score.
My folks owned a deep blue Pontiac GTO. The name was inspired by the Ferrari 250 GTO. It had a four-speed manual transmission, and Sam and I nicknamed it the Goat. The GTO was the first muscle car produced in the 1960s. Dad was a bit of a car guy. It was not a Ford Mustang, Chevy Chevelle, or Corvette, but it was a respectable car to be seen in and not a bad one to have in a street raceânothing Pops would ever condone or know about. Poor Sam, his dad drove a 1964 two-toned Buick Sport Wagonâlight brown on top and fake wood grain on the bottom. I loved to give Sam grief by pointing out it would be popular with the girls as it sported a raised roof and skylights over the third seat and cargo area. It was never in a street race, and Sam never volunteered to drive. I will say, however, it worked well for our weekend Boy Scout outings.
I walked out of the DMV office with temporary license in hand and the promise of a real one in a couple of weeks in the mail. Pops had me drive home, reminding me on the way that the GTO was the family car and was needed by Mom to shuttle my younger brother and sister to and from school and sporting events and for many other family errands. The Goat was probably more than Mom needed or wanted, but Pops bought the cars in the family. He had a British Green Triumph TR 3 with beige leather seats that were as soft as a glove and British racing logos on the side. The TR 3 is a true sunny weather roadster. It has a convertible hood that snaps on and off, removable side curtains, and very low doors. There is room for a third person or child sitting sideways behind the seats. On occasion, one of us kids would ride along behind my folks, sitting behind their seats, and the air would blast our hair in all directions. That was always a real treat. Pops drove it to and from work, but it was strictly off limits to the kids; even Mom would never drive it. I loved that car, and everyone knew it was Pops when it came down the road. There was not another one like it in Salem.
The GTO, I was informed, would not be used for joy riding with my buddies or I would lose all driving privileges. The shine quickly faded on my new license, less than an hour after having passed my driving testâharsh. When we got home, Mom gave me a big hug, handed me five dollars, and offered to allow me to drive my younger sister and brother to Dairy Queen for ice cream. Sam sat in the passenger seat and John and Stacy jumped in the backseat of the Goat, excited for their first ride-along with their big brother with a new license. My older brother, Bart, had a motorcycle, so John and Stacy rarely went anywhere with Bart. Mom would not allow them to ride on his bike.
While John and Stacy excitedly talked, goofed around, and ate their Dilly Bars at the local Dairy Queen, Sam and I had a very serious conversation about life as âadults.â We knew we would not survive the last two and a half years of high school if we had to share the Goat or double date in a Buick Sport Wagon âwith a raised roof and skylights over the cargo and third seat area.â We needed a car, a real car, and needed to find some way to get the cash to buy one. Neither of us had jobs and I had about fifteen dollars to my name.
That night, after John and Stacy were in bed and Mom was in another room doing whatever moms do, I told Dad we needed to have a talk, man-to-man. In a speech as polished as a school presentation in Mrs. Jensenâs history class, I very sensibly explained that I would be on the varsity baseball squad my junior year (I hoped) and really needed my own car to get to and from games and to help get my teammates to and from games. âMan-to-man,â I explained, âa respected varsity pitcher could not be seen being driven around by his mother or riding the bus to school or varsity games.â For good measure, I added, âCollege and even big-league scouts will no doubt be at our games, and I have to present the right impression of a mature and independent man.â I wrapped up my closing statement by pointing out that if I hoped to land a collegiate scholarship and save Dad the college tuition, and eventually make it into the big leagues, I must present the right image when out in public. âWhy,â I touted, âThe college scholarship alone will more than pay for a âsensibleâ car.â Dad listened intently and even made notes on a yellow legal pad, as I outlined my very sound reasons for him to buy me my first car. My argument was airtight. Any judge or jury would rule in my favor.
For good measure, I told Pops I could give Mom a hand by driving John and Stacy to some of their school and sporting events (knowing that would be a promise quickly reneged upon), and on weekends I would run errands for him when he was too busy. It all made so much sense, and I suggested we go out the next weekend to look for a very âsensibleâ used car for me. I even offered that it did not need to be new and that a one- or two-year-old car would be work if he thought a new car was too much money. I let Pops in on the fact that Sam and I had had some long and serious discussions about the responsibilities of car ownership (even though they had all occurred that day at the Dairy Queen over Cherry Cokes), and Sam and I were in complete agreement that me having my own car would be best for our family and for the team. The debate team at North Salem High could not have presented its position better; it was money in the bank. I was already picturing in my mind a sweet gold 1964 ½ Mustang hardtop with a sensible six-cylinder engine and four speed. The first Mustang was a 1964 ½, and it even came with special tires with two thin red sidewall stripes. I tried to resist but had to show Dad a picture of the latest Mustang in the current Life Magazine. I was sure it was all but mineâafter all, I was willing to compromise on a used one.
Pops was a lawyer. He had a general practice that included criminal law, family law, personal injury, and business law. He had more than his fair share of jury trials and was well known throughout the state as one of the most capable trial lawyers. Many opposing lawyers had made inspired and impassioned pleas to âhisâ juries. My presentation, that of a sixteen-year-old boy with a shiny new driverâs license in hand and an eager smile, was transparent. He had the wisdom and compassion to not crush my aspirations right away; instead, as he would with any of his juries, he countered each argument and then rested his case. That is something I would grow to appreciate in the years ahead but certainly not at all on that particular night in April of 1965.
Through the back and forth that evening, I learned that money did not grow on trees. The cost of a car involved not only what you paid at the car lot but also car insurance, gas, oil, tires, and unexpected maintenance. I also learned it took five years to really master the art of driving and that in his personal injury practice he saw it was the new drivers who were by far at the highest risk of having an accident. Finally, I learned I would not appreciate my own car unless I paid for it myself. Maybe most of those lessons were true, but I assured him the last was not, and I would really appreciate him buying me my own car. It turns out he was right on the last point too, but more on that later.
With Dad being both judge and jury, the reading of the verdict by the jury foreman was reluctantly waived by me, and my dream of my first car was âquashedâ (a common legal term meaning to put down or suppress completely, as in to quash a rebellion). I myself was quashed from the high of getting my license to the low of losing my first car even before I got it, all in a single day.
My father is a great admirer of Mark Twain, and today, because of that, I am too. Whenever one of our father-son discussions turned to Pops pulling a Mark Twain volume off one of his shelves and telling me while doing so that there was something he wanted to read to me, I knew my boat was sunk.
âMatt,â he said that night, âLet me read you something from Mark Twain: âThe secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.ââ He did not buy me a car that day or ever. I guess in my mind I knew it was a long shot, no matter how sensible it seemed as Sam and I crafted our arguments in that booth at Dairy Queen. I retreated to my room, planning to talk through my defeat with Sam the next day and figure out a Plan B. I was not giving up on getting a car; it might just take a little longer than I had planned.
Ed Davis was a PE teacher and the varsity baseball coach at North Salem. He was a frequent guest at our JV games and practices, scouting talent for his varsity squad. He had taken a particular interest in me because of my pitching. Most of the teachers had summer jobs to make ends meet because of meager teacher salaries. Coach Davis painted houses during his three months off in the summer. When Sam and I shared with Coach the good news of my newfound freedom of a license and the bad news of being denied my birthright of my own car at age sixteen by my very own father, he suggested Sam and I might want to get our hands dirty and find summer jobs, as long as they did not interfere, of course, with baseball training. Coach Davis said they always had more houses to paint than hours in the day, and if Sam and I were willing to rise early, be on time, and work really hard without complaining, we might just earn enough to buy that car by the end of the summer. My prospects brightened.
Sure, missing the freedom to goof off or meet up with my buddies to play a pickup game of baseball or hoops was not my first choice, but having my own car was the most important thing to me that summer of 1965. Coach Davis only lived a half mile or so away. I would grab my bike at five oâclock each morning, ride over to Samâs, and we would cruise into Coach Davisâs by five thirty. We knew never to be late for too many reasons to recite. Coach had a 1956 Ford F-100 pickup with a wraparound back window that he affectionally named Blue Suede. I am not sure if it was because of the baby blue color he painted her or maybe Elvis Presleyâs recording of the song by that name. Elvis was the King in 1965âthe Beatles were just beginning their rise in the US. Salem was also a little slower than Portland to catch up on the latest music and a bit more country-western, so Elvis was still It.
Coach was married to Kathy; they had met in high school and married after Coach got his teaching certificate. They had two small kids: Nate and Natalie. It seemed a bit odd to have a son and daughter with such similar names. They ended up with three more kids after my days at North Salem High were over: Noreen, Norris, and Nicole. Kathy was nice but seemed to have a few kooky ideasâat least it seemed that way to two high schoolers.
Kathy would greet us each morning with coffee or Cokes and donuts, and a wide smile. We mostly went with the Cokes, but I was growing to appreciate coffee if it had enough sugar and cream. We would help Coach load up Blue Suede with the paint needed that day, brushes, ladders, turpentine, drop cloths, and other supplies, along with a large ice chest. By six in the morning, we were piled in the front bench seat of Blue Suede, the engine humming, the radio cranked to the latest rock and roll or country-western station, and we were shooting down the long gravel driveway that led from Coachâs house to the road to that dayâs jobsite. Some jobs took more than a week to complete and others only a few days. One large mansion on the south end of town was three stories with gingerbread trim that took more than two weeks to paint because of the detail and the number of different paint colors. I noticed a girl who seemed to live there, a tall and strikingly beautiful goddess with blond hair, coming and going from the house, but I never got the chance to bump into her and ask her name or impress her with my charm. The vision of her stayed with me long after that house painting job was complete, and I confess she showed up in more than one of my dreams.
We were at work by six thirty but kept the noise down until eight oâclock when the sanders and compression came to life. By ten, except on really cold days, the shirts came off, the paint dust was flying, and we were working like true journeyman painters. I kept hoping the tall, beautiful girl, who seemed to live at the large mansion, might catch a glimpse of my muscular and tanned body, glistening with sweat from hard labor, and come by with a glass of cold lemonade. The closest I came was buying a five-cent glass of lemonade from her much younger sister and her friend, who had a lemonade stand in front of their house. I asked her about her sister. âOh, you mean Ren. Ren is off with her boyfriend Steve and is way too busy to help with our lemonade stand.â With no car and no good excuse to return to the mansion after the job was done, memories of her slipped away but never fully disappeared. Even though fate did not bring us together that summer, it was still satisfying to see a peeling mansion transformed into something we were proud of.
At noon each day, the ice chest was hauled out from Coachâs truck; cold soda, sandwiches, and Kathyâs home-baked cookies were passed around; and we relaxed for a half hour in the sun before working another three hours straight until quitting time at three thirty. It took another half hour to clean up, load Blue Suede, and head back to Coachâs. Sam and I usually parted at his house around four thirty, and I was home before four forty-five. This still gave us time after dinner to toss the baseball around and visit Marleen (my girl at the time) and Cindy (Samâs girl) before hitting the sack. We worked extremely hard every day and slept well but always had the alarm set for the next morningâs very early start. The weekends were ours, but otherwise, we worked every day that summer.
Minimum wage was $1.25 an hour in 1965; it seemed like a lot at the time, especially when we did not have much time to spend it. On occasion, one of the owners would give us a tip of five dollars, or even ten if the job was looking particularly good or we were making good time finishing the house. The tips were collected and split equally among that dayâs crew. Coach insisted on that, as we were a team and the team shared equally in its successes. I saved every dollar that summer other than a couple dollars here or there for a movie out or a burger with Marleen. I still look back on those summers of work with good memories. Sam and I worked with Coach Davis in the summer of â65 and again in the summer of â66. There was even the occasional odd job during the school year that helped keep gas in the tankânot so easy with gas at thirty cents a gallon.
I know Pops was proud, and my guess is Mark Twain might have even had a good word or two to say about the work Sam and I did. We werenât Tom Sawyer whitewashing a fence, but not that far off. âTom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing itânamely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.â This was no doubt part of Popâs lesson for me that summer of â65.
Those summers taught me about hard work, the comradery of working together to complete something more than just nine innings on a ball field, and what it took to truly earn a dollar. Those lessons would become important allies in my future.
It took me until almost the end of the summer of â65 to set aside enough for a black 1960 Dodge Dart, although the paint job was likely the result of a few well-aimed spray cans rather than the work of a professional in a paint booth. All I could afford was the basic Seneca model with its spray bomb paint job, but it was a car, and it was my car. As it turns out, the Dart was one of the most successful compact cars ever introduced in the American marketplace.
I still own the 1960 Dodge Dart, although it has since had a $1,500 paint job, updated upholstery, and a newer Hemi engine with a four speed. In 1968, Dodge worked with Hurst Performance to build a limited number of the âHurst HEMI Dartsâ powered by the 440 cu in (7.2 l) RB big-block. I loved the Dart and in later years had the passion and money to transform mine into an after-market Hurst HEMI Dart. Sam avoided the fate of his dadâs Buick Sport Wagon when he purchased a candy-apple red 1957 Chevy Bel Air the following summer.
Armed with the freedom of my own car, the wisdom and bravado gained from working a real job, and the prospect of my final two years as a varsity pitcher for the North Salem Vikings, I felt I had the world eating from my hand as school started in the fall of 1965. I was confident the Braves, Cubs, or even Yankees would be scouting my games and looking for the next Whitey Ford or Don Drysdale. Sam and I were on our way.
As a member of the class of 1966 and a baseball fanatic myself, I chose to review this book. I lived through the Vietnam War era, protests and all, Woodstock, the summer of love, and more, so I was anxious to read this one.
This is the first-person fictional account from the point of view of Matt, an accomplished pitcher on his high school baseball team. He has dreams of pitching in Major League Baseball. His battery mate, catcher Sam, and he are quite the team; in fact, both of them are offered full baseball scholarships to the University of Arizona, one of the premier colleges known for developing baseball players who make it to MLB. Matt goes for one year, while Sam decides instead to enlist in the Army and goes to Vietnam. Matt then gets into an unplanned situation, derailing his baseball dreams.
Sam returns a changed man. Even Sam's longtime girlfriend Cindy doesn't know what happened to him in Vietnam, and Sam doesn't discuss it. Sam has a job at a local car repair shop and a free apartment over the garage. Matt thinks Sam seems "off" and opens a real can of worms when he discusses this with his father, who's an attorney.
The story is solid and goes through many of the trials and tribulations this country endured during the time period. The author explores racial issues (his friend Sam is Black), the drug culture, the way the U.S. government deceived people it sent to Vietnam, assassinations of political figures and their impacts on the country, and so much more.
My one criticism of this book is that the author spends time on explaining small things in parenthesis, such as baseball definitions, legal issues and other minor points I don't think need to be included. He could eliminate some of those to tighten up the prose.
The story itself, however, is solid and captures the essence of what people who lived during those times. As historical fiction, it works well.
With this as his first venture into fiction, this author, who's an attorney by trade, will benefit by continuing his efforts as a writer. He demonstrates tremendous potential with The Class of 1967.