“Last of the Seals” Now Available for Kindle

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The Women of 1957

The research I did for my new mystery trilogy reminded me of the world that women inhabited in 1957 as they hoped for a career or a chance to see the world before they “settled down.” “Settle down” was a euphemism in earlier eras to refer to the time in a young woman’s life when she should shun the working world, get married and start having babies.
There is certainly nothing wrong with women getting married and raising children. However, in 1957, it was “either or” not both. In the world of my novel “Last of the Seals” I tried to make the character of TWA stewardess Amelia Ryan, reflective of the narrow opportunities for women in the 1950s.
I found an old job application for stewardesses from the 1950s. The requirements show how far we have come as a society and specifically how far women have come in their quest for equality in the work place.
Here is a laundry list of the requirements for stewardesses. They are:
* Appearance: Height and weight proportionate
Attractive (“just below Hollywood”) Standards
Gender: Female
Martial Status: Single, not divorced, separated or widowed.
Race: White
Age: 21 to 26 years old
Education: Registered nurse or two years of college
Height: Between 5 feet, 2 inches and 5 feet, 6 inches
Weight: 135 pounds maximum

I’m not sure how a woman is supposed to react to the qualification–”attractive, just below Hollywood standards.” Is it a compliment or an insult to be told that you are “just below Hollywood standards.” It’s astounding to think of a job application which lists the “qualifications” as “white, single, female, a range for height and of course a weight restriction. The weight restriction was a sliding scale. For instance, the fictional character, Amelia Ryan is 5 feet four inches which means she could only weigh 125 pounds. If a stewardess shows up for a flight above weight, she is grounded.
The airlines wanted pretty young, single women to provide eye candy for their well-heeled passengers who flew–mostly affluent businessmen. Once a woman was over 26 or was married she was asked to resign.
That of course changed.
On February 11, 1958, Ruth Carol Taylor was hired by Mohawk Airlines and became the first African-American flight attendant in the United States. Ironically, despite her historic breaking of the racial restriction, Ruth’s career ended just six months later due to another discriminatory barrier: she married and was dismissed by the airline. In later years, stewardesses eventually became flight attendants and all of the discriminatory barriers came down one by one. Incidentally, only stewardesses had the age restriction and the marriage ban. No other airline employees and especially pilots, were under the same type of requirements.
In my novel “Last of the Seals”, stewardess Amelia Ryan falls in love with Sam Slater. They want to get married. But Amelia also loves her job. She has to choose between marriage and continuing as a stewardess.
The glamorous world of stewardesses was one of the only avenues open to women in the 1950s to “see the world” and have a career. But it came at a great price.

“Last of the Seals” now Available for Nook

“Last of the Seals” my new mystery novel set in 1957 San Francisco is now amiable at Barnes and Noble in softcover for $14.99 and Nook for $2.99 Click on the link to the right.

The “Real” Last of the Seals

Former San Francisco Seals batboy Bill Castellanos shared this picture with me. Bill lived during one winter inside Seals Stadium and he was there for the famed last season in 1957 that provides the backdrop for my new book “Last of the Seals.” Picture are (left to right) Jim Moran, second baseman for the Seals, Bill and Don Rode, Seals assistant trainer from 1951-55.

“Last Of The Seals” Now Available At Amazon and Barnes & Noble

My new mystery trilogy is now available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble in softcover for $14.99. It will be available in Kindle, Nook and on ITunes for $2.99 very soon.
The year is 1957 in San Francisco. Sam Slater is a lifetime minor league baseball player for the San Francisco Seals. The Seals have just one more season left as San Francisco is about to become a major league city. The Giants are coming to town in 1958 and the Seals will be displaced. Sam has come to the end of his baseball career and is going to join the private detective agency of his best friend. When his friend is brutally murdered, Sam must go it alone and try to find out why. Along the way he is swept off of his feet by a beautiful Elvis-obsessed TWA stewardess named Amelia Ryan. Sam and Amelia try to unravel the mystery together. Sam’s best friend, Jimmy inadvertently saw something he shouldn’t have. Sam and Amelia have pictures in their possession that have crime families in San Francisco and Chicago very worried. Then a young woman Sam has been searching for is found dead on the beach. Suddenly, Sam and Amelia find themselves in danger. On dark and foggy San Francisco nights, trouble is lurking just around the next corner.
Click the link on the right to buy “Last of the Seals”

Read Early Review of “Last of the Seals”

My latest book “Last of the Seals” is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
“Last of the Seals” revisits the world of San Francisco in 1958. It was a time of Ike, Elvis, ’57 Chevys and the last year of the San Francisco Seals.The new book will be the first of a mystery trilogy with two great characters, Sam Slater and Amelia Ryan. Sam is an aging minor league baseball player who is trying to make the transition to becoming a private eye.
Amelia is a TWA stewardess who falls in love with Sam and becomes his partner. Together they flee from a gangster hit man and try to find out who killed a young woman. 
Here is an early review of “Last of the Seals” by Todd Rutherford of PublishingGuru.com.

Last of the Seals: A Sam Slater Mystery by Greg Messel is a page-turning novel, chronicling the story of Sam Slater, a minor league baseball player who becomes a private eye after the San Francisco Seals are disbanded to make way for the Giants. 
This first installment establishes Messel as a master of the mystery adventure genre, proving that he is as talented at keeping readers in suspense as he is at capturing their emotions, as he did in such novels as The Illusion of Certainty.Slater’s new career immediately launches him into the middle of a mystery; his best friend and would-be business partner was murdered just before delivering photos to a client, making it evident that someone definitely did not want the photos to be seen and would go to any lengths to suppress them.  As Sam begins to unravel the mystery, he is threatened and bullied and someone leaves an ominous message for him at his apartment. 
The only bright spot for Sam is his new girlfriend, Amelia, a glamorous TWA flight attendant, who is endangered by Slater’s new career.  When it becomes evident that the mob is involved in his partner’s death, Amelia and Sam must flee San Francisco together.As the story unfolds, Messel keeps readers on the edge of their seats, anxiously turning pages. 
Messel captivates readers with his colorful cast of baseball players, TWA flight attendants, mobsters, socialites, philanderers, and murderers.The Last of the Seals interweaves the story of Sam and Amelia’s romance, as well as a nostalgic account of life in the Bay Area in the 1950’s, into the series of mysteries that Sam must solve. 
This spellbinding story will inevitably leave readers anxious for the next release in the Sam Slater trilogy, The Deadly Plunge, which will be available in early 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

My First Big League Game at Seals Stadium

On July 12,1958 I went to my first major league baseball game with my dad at Seals Stadium. 

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.  As a boy, I intensely loved baseball and became an instant fan when the Giants moved to San Francisco. My dad took me to Seals Stadium to see the Giants play the Milwaukee Braves. The Braves had won the World Series in 1957 and fielded great players like Hank Aaron, Eddie Matthews, Joe Adcock and two immortal pitchers, Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette. 

The Giants had Felipe Alou, Orlando Cepeda, Johnny Antonelli, and the great Willie Mays.  Willie was my boyhood hero. 

I never got to go to a Seals game. I was only eight years old when I saw the game in 1958; however, I can vividly remember that experience. Antonelli pitched for the Giants and Spahn pitched for the Braves. The Giants won 5-3. The big blow for the Giants was Cepeda’s three-run home run in the fifth inning.

I remember the green walls, the green grass, the enthusiastic crowd of over 22,000 people, the big clock tower, the center field scoreboard and the Hamm’s Beer mug emptying and refilling.  The whole place smelled like beer and cigars. It was wonderful. 

I sat in the right field bleachers. I remember in my child’s mind being very concerned when Milwaukee’s Joe Adcock hit a home run to right field in the second inning. Adcock’s home run went over my head and out of the stadium. I remembered walking on the street behind the right field grandstands when I entered Seals Stadium. I wondered what happened when the ball went outside the stadium. Did it hit someone on the sidewalk or hit a car?

I got to go back to Seals Stadium a couple of more times in 1959. It was a magical place for a boy who loved baseball.  Over the years, my dad and I went to many games at Candlestick Park. It was not until I became an adult that it dawned on me how wonderful Seals Stadium was and how cold and awful Candlestick could be. 

I’ve always been fascinated by the Seals and Giants history–probably because much of it occurred in my childhood and teenaged years.
The picture below is of me in my first San Francisco Giants’ hat in 1959 playing baseball on a foggy stretch of beach near the Cliff House in San Francisco.
I revisit that long gone era in my new novel “Last of the Seals” coming in April. See the videos below and click on the links on the right side of the blog to revisit that era.