Palm Sunday_ An Autobiographical Collage - Kurt Vonnegut [60]
And the Class of Fifty Seven had its dreams.
But we all thought we’d changed the world
With our great works and deeds;
Or maybe we just thought the world
Would change to fit our needs.
The Class of Fifty Seven had its dreams.
Betty runs a trailer park,
Jan sells Tupperware,
Randy’s on an insane ward,
And Mary’s on welfare,
Charley took a job with Ford,
Joe took Freddy’s wife,
Charlotte took a millionaire,
And Freddy took his life.
And the Class of Fifty Seven had its dreams,
But livin’ life from day to day
Is never like it seems.
Things get complicated
When you get past eighteen,
But the Class of Fifty Seven had its dreams.
Helen is a hostess,
Frank works at the mill,
Janet teaches grade school
And prob’ly always will,
Bob works for the city,
And Jack’s in lab research,
And Peggy plays the organ
At the Presbyterian Church.
And the Class of Fifty Seven had its dreams.
But we all thought we’d change the world
With our great works and deeds;
Or maybe we just thought the world
Would change to fit our needs.
The Class of Fifty Seven had its dreams.
John is big in cattle,
Ray is deep in debt,
Where Mavis fin’ly wound up
Is anybody’s bet,
Linda married Sonny,
Brenda married me,
And the class of all of us
Is just part of history.
And the Class of Fifty Seven had its dreams,
But livin’ life from day to day
Is never like it seems.
Things get complicated
When you get past eighteen,
But the Class of Fifty Seven had its dreams.
Ah, the Class of Fifty Seven had its dreams.
Copyright © 1972 by House of Cash.
The authors are Don and Harold Reid, the only actual brothers in the country-music quartet that calls itself the Statler Brothers. Nobody in the quartet is named Statler. The quartet named itself after a roll of paper towels.
• • •
My wife Jill and I admire the Statler Brothers so much that we went all the way to the Niagara Falls International Convention Center in April of 1980 to hear them and to shake their hands. We had our pictures taken with them, too.
Yes, and they announced from the stage that they were honored that night to have in the audience “the famous writer Kurt Vonnegut and his wife, Jill Krementz, the famous photographer.” We got a terrific hand, although we did not stand up and identify ourselves, and although nobody, I’m sure, had ever heard of us before.
A woman came up to us afterward, and she said that we must be the famous people the brothers had mentioned, since we didn’t look like anybody else in the auditorium. She said that from now on she was going to read everything we wrote.
Jill and I stayed in the same Holiday Inn as the Statler Brothers, but they slept all afternoon. Their bus was parked outside where we could see it from our room. Right after their performance, around midnight, they got on the bus, and it started up with that fruity, burbling, soft purple rumble that bus engines have. The bus left without any lights showing inside. Nobody waved from a window. It headed for Columbus, Ohio, for another performance the next night. I forget where it was supposed to go after that—Saginaw, Michigan, I think.
• • •
I would actually like to have “The Class of ’57” become our national anthem for a little while. Everybody knows that “The Star Spangled Banner” is a bust as music and poetry, and is as representative of the American spirit as the Taj Mahal.
I can see Americans singing in a grandstand at the Olympics somewhere, while one of our athletes wins a medal—for the decathlon, say. I can see tears streaming down the singers’ cheeks when they get to these lines:
Where Mavis fin’ly wound up
Is anybody’s bet.
• • •
“The Class of ’57” could be an anthem for my generation, at least. Many people have said that we already have an anthem, which is my friend Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” which starts off like this:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro