Since Class Counts is about class, I thought the words below would have special meaning for most Americas. The book you are about to read is a 340-page ramble that my old handball, basketball and baseball buddies might appreciate. We were ordinary guys growing up in tiny apartments and blighted bungalows during the Cold War and the Bomb. Some of us were slightly wild and paid the price; some had their lives reduced to ashes in the jungles of Vietnam, which replaced the Bomb as the nation’s highway to hell. Still others were gripped by amped-up ambitions to break out of their small-town, blue-collar lockup, become organization men, and wear gray flannel or blue-pin stripe suits. None of us was a class bully or nerd, especially talented or gifted. None was later seduced by hallucinations, paint spray mishmash, or the new norms. We were straight shooters; ordinary working-class American children; infatuated by stories of blood, guts and glory; liked Ike and Cronkite, and disliked Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman (the latter who we construed as loud, nuts and off the beaten track).

Many of my old school chums from New York’s P.S. 42 did not achieve the American dream, as they stumbled and mumbled through life as stolid working-class citizens, considered employees as Reynolds wrap or Kleenex—to be used and discarded. A few of us made it to the solid middle and professional class. In a nutshell, we were just average souls---not usually different from most middle Americans, just trying to flee from our surroundings and gain opportunity beyond our small town. Although we all grew up eager and ambitious, believing in folks in authority and in the mobility ladder, many of us were humbled and marginalized by the economic system we thought so highly of.

This book is for the plain people in America and, the plain people I grew up with in elementary school, the old gang who called me “Doc” on the playing field because they thought I was conversational and smart. Here, then, is a special salute, a quick glimpse into memory lane—a little like the Everly or Statler Brothers, who anyone under fifty years is not expected to know. The names below have special meaning to me, and they have not been changed to protect the innocent; they are average Americans, what this book is mainly about, known by their friends and family, and unknown by history. So here is the old gang, a small slice of Americana, and what happened to them, fifty-plus years later: To what extent they changed from blue collar to white collar, from working class to professional class.

Jack Alter (small business owner, Coral Springs, Florida)
Alexander Biamonte (status unknown)
Lawrence (“The Babe”) Berg (college graduate, retired social worker,New York)
Donald (“Bossy”) Bethell (gas station owner, deceased)
Harold (“Blockhead”) Blacher (college graduate, accountant, Santa Monica, California)
Alfred Chapnick (retired manufacturer, New York)
Howard Cohen (clothing sales representative, Miami, Florida)
Stan (“The Man”) Eckstein (college graduate, accountant, W. Palm Beach, Florida
Robert (“Bell”) Feldman (tuxedo store owner, deceased)
Alan (“The Toe”) Fitleson (retired newspaper printer New York)
Gilbert Kerry (college graduate, management, public utilities, Houston, Texas)
Bernard (“Bee Bee”) Miller (college graduate, retired engineer, New York)
Marvin Rostolla (retired police officer and detective, New York)
Fred (“Muscles”) Serge (butcher, New York)
Mike (“Blue Eyes”) Sitler (gas station owner, New York)
Harry (“The Greek”) Sophos (management, airline flight scheduling, Dallas, Texas)
Leonard Zafonte (solidier,deceased)

It is worth noting that none of us at P.S. 42 had any pedigree, legacy, or inherited power or privilege to start the course for our future, to guide our way toward achieving the American dream, or to help move us from the base toward the top of the socioeconomic ladder. It would be a mistake to underestimate such factors, even though they rarely, if ever, are considered variables to control in sociological and economic studies of class and rank. But then we were all innocent and idealistic. We were so naïve that we did not even know what we didn’t know: How the system works, that executives such as H.Lee Scott of Wal-Mart earns roughly 850 times the average pay of a Wal-Mart sales clerk—the kind of person we knew as the next-door neighbor. Despite all our aspirations and ambitions, we were limited in just how far we could move up the class structure. Although this perspective may seem uncomfortable for many Americans who whole-heartedly believe in the system, or even slightly un-American, these facts are born out in the pages you are about to read.

Now the flip side is, there is still no better country than America, where the guys from P.S. 42 could have had a better chance to rise from the base of the socioeconomic status. The problem is, today the chances of the economic base improving their condition and becoming better off from one generation into the next is diminishing, evidenced by growing inequality in America. Allow me to cite just one of the many facts and figures you are going to read in this book. In the last fifteen years, real household income rose 2 percent for the bottom 90 percent, but rose 57 for the top 1 percent, climbed 85 percent for the top 0.1 percent and sky rocketed 112 percent for the top of the top .01 percent.* In other words, the super rich are getting ricer almost twice as fast as the rich and about 100 times faster than the rest of us. If the kids from P.S 42, now in retirement age, had to begin again, and giving the same starting conditions, they would most likely be in worse economic shape.

It is this factor, inequality in America, which my old classmates and friends had to face and were handicapped from the starting gate. The problem is considerably worse today, leaving more people behind---creating a growing loss of motivation at the bottom, a smaller pie to divide, and a shrinking middle class. Extreme differences in income and wealth, a growing gap between rich and common people, is the number-one social and economic issue facing America; it is the most important long-term problem confronting the country with the equally rival problem of terrorism.

Note: *Erick Konigsberg, “The New Class War: The Haves vs. The Have Mores,”New York Times, November 19, 2006.