Should You Stay in Your Home or Walk

You are upside down in your mortgage. You will never claw back that hundred grand in lost equity. You say well this is my home. Your taxes are high. They will never come down. Your mortgage is high and worse you cannot refinance because your house is inverted. You are stuck in an over valued asset that is bleeding you dry and you are on the same footing as a renter. In fact it is worse than a renter. You owe the bank for the full amount of your mortgage. A phantom tied to a value that vanished five years ago. Should you stay or go?

Ten million people are facing this dilemma. When rich people have a bad investment they walk. Middle class  morality does not exist .But for the millions stuck in upside down homes there is really only two options .Keep paying on a depreciating asset if you can or you walk out of your house and start over. A short sale perhaps. A deed in Lieu (give it back to the bank) Or good old foreclosure where you get to squat for a couple years before your house goes to auction.

These are the options for a large segment of the population and none of them are good. Walk and your credit is trashed. Stay and have nothing to show. Strategic default is what they call walking now. Jingle Mail. Everyone one has to face this one and figure out their own bailout plan. But sitting will only work so long. If you take your medicine then you can start over. Don't take your medicine and stick it out and hope values could come back. Not likely.

So there it is. Stay or Go. The medicine is bitter but waiting only prolongs the disease.

Rocket Man...the American dream upside down

 

Five Things You Can Do To Keep Your House

I'm amazed at how many people I talk to who are in the process of losing their homes and yet they have a good income. Somehow they missed a payment and slid into two thirty day late or worse they go into three late payments and now they cannot come up with the money. I know a  man who lost his home and still does not understand how people can afford to pay their mortgage. And he had a good income! But here we go. Five Ways to keep your home.

1. Pay your mortgage first. Always. Simple right. Do you know how many people pay credit cards first or medical bills? And then they don't have the money for their mortgage. The very first thing you do is pay your mortgage above all else. Then whatever is left over you pay your utilities. Keep the lights on and the home heated. Then food. Then credit cards. Then medical.

2.If you are late then negotiate with the bank right away. Pay late but pay. Even if you are month behind. They cannot initiate foreclosure if you send in your payment.

3.Go for a  loan modification. If you are late then you are a perfect candidate. In fact they wont consider you for a loan mod unless you are late. If you get it they will reset your mortgage. Keep paying during the loan mod even if they tell you not too. What happens is people don't pay and then they don't get it and owe like ten grand.

4. If you go into foreclosure go to court and enter the case. You don't need a lawyer. You pay  fifty dollars and you enter your side of the case. They will continue it. Go back and they will continue it. Go back and they will continue it. This can go on for years. I know a woman who asked for her deed and they couldn't produce it. She has been in her home for five years since the foreclosure began.

5. Don't leave your home. I know more people who leave their home after the first court appearance notice. Don't do it. Illinois is running years behind in their foreclosure process and your loan mod could come through at any time. But the bottom line is you can probably stay in your home for years beyond the initial filing of foreclosure.

There. Five things to keep your home. Good luck.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

The Shame of Not Paying Your Mortgage

In my novel Rocket Man the protagonist contemplates not paying his mortgage many times. Underwater and unable to move he sees no way out. Certainly with one in four mortgages underwater  millions have considered doing just this. Walking away from their homes to start over. The statistics on this are hard to find but it is on the rise to the point where Freddy Mac is now offering a  program that allows borrowers to do just that...walk away.

But middle class shame keeps many people in place paying on an upside down asset they will never come out of. The rich have no such shame. If they have a bad investment they toss it aside and give it back to the bank. They have no sense of shame or middle class morality. But a lot of people do to the point that when you read articles about who has walked away from their mortgages they wont give their names even years later.

We have been shamed into thinking it was our failure. Somehow the derivative players who used our homes like picks in an elaborate game of poker were caused by us. When our houses were cleaned out we had no control. When the Ponzi scheme hit the traders ran for cover and were bailed out but the middle class was stuck with the empty bottles and tattered streamers of that party. We were stuck with worthless homes.

Strategic default they call it. That is what savvy people call it. Some would say it is a rationalization but this morality has been applied fairly. The banks were bailed out and were never held accountable for loan products that sold borrowers down the river. Yet middle class people are expected to stay in a house that is upside down with taxes based on a value that no longer exists.

I one time lamented to my mother in law that I should have been smarter financially. She looked at me and said, Jesus Christ, it was a depression. There was nothing you could do. She should know. She went through the first one.

 Rocket Man...the American dream upside down

The Timesuck of the Internet

How much time do you spend on the Internet and how productive are you? When you try and get something done on the Internet you are taking on the whole world. And the world pushes back and suddenly you cannot get the most basic thing done And you spend hours trying to get something accomplished. And it may be the only game in town but maybe there is a better way. Or try this. If everyone is there then who is really listening?

Take getting a job. Millions of resumes. You don't get any response. You get nothing. People send off resumes and nothing comes back. And yet you remain convinced this is the way to do it. Not necessarily. Maybe it is time to around the building and go in the back door. Lets say  the Internet is this huge building with only one entrance. The problem is not everyone can fit in that room. In fact a lot of people never even get up to the door because it is crowded.

That has happened on the Internet. You can tell. There are so many people trying to do the exact same thing that nothing happens. You get blown out by volume. Lets use a highway analogy. Too many people creates traffic and then you come to a standstill. Gridlock. This is what happens all the time on the net. The gridlock is you get drained out by the voices.

The challenge is to know when to walk away from the net and do the unexpected. You know. Like pick up the phone. I got something really radical. Go see someone in person. I bet you will have the whole place to yourself.

Rocket Man...the funniest novel since Russos Straight Man...Chicago Suntimes
 

Fort Apache: Still Can't Move

They say the housing market is getting better but most people still cant move. Unless you want to walk out of your home and start over. A lot of people are doing that. Well some. But you have to be ok with taking nothing with you and maybe wrecking your credit. But the bottom line is the normal process of taking some money with you for your next house has been obliterated. Not only was lending destroyed in the Great Recession but Real Estate has pretty much ceased to function. At least for people who now own

Even if you can get a little out of your house then you have to find a house where the new numbers ill work. The fact of the matter is most people are so upside down in their homes they cannot move. In this way people are stranded. There is no mobility anymore in the upward mobility of Americans. We always prided ourselves on being able to move on if things don't work out. Now we have to just hunker down. The problem is we have been hunkering down for five years.

And they say real estate is up. But for who? First time home buyers. They can come at it fresh with no loss on their current home. Lets face it....it is freaky to walk away from hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equity. Poof. Gone. Intellectually you know it. Of course the real problem is bad credit. A lot of people cant qualify for a new home or they don't have the income anymore. Fort Apache. That is where we are now.

We have to just hide out in our fort until....

Rocket Man....the novel of the Upside Down Generation

Selling Fiction in the Brave New World

It is huge. Where do you begin? And if you have a good publisher and a good book it is even worse because you have to deliver. You could just slough it off and say it is too hard but that wont do you any good here. You know you have come too far to give up now while you are in the final turn after years of rejection and hours of crafting and now that book is sitting on your table and you have to sell it and you have to get it reviewed and more than that you have to get people to read it! None of this is easy of course but you dig in on the side of the mountain and just begin.

And what is that mountain? Well it is the Internet and all it's attendant modalities. There is no clear path. Getting reviews is one aspect of the selling process but there are many parts. And so you become more of a techno geek and what is your book really about anyway so that SEOs will pick up on it. And if it is a book like Rocket Man then it is about right now, the American Dream. the inversion of that dream. The whole upside down thing of middle class America. It is about the forty seven percent and the power grab of the one percent.

It is about bringing up a family and trying to survive. It is about individuality in a land of mass conformity. It is about vanishing youth and increasing responsibility. It is about the pressure to succeed while questioning the validity of the concept. It is about the weirdness of parent child activities and how great it is. It is about the whole banana, but how do you get all of that into press release or uploaded into one of the many search engine protocols?

So you do what you can. You must do what you can and you know the odds you are dealing with. Oprah is not an option. A big movie is not an option. Your only option is the push you can exert against that big uncaring world. Maybe that is enough in the end. Maybe it is all you have.

www.billhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man...the novel of the upside down generation

The New American Dream

What is the biggest trend in the country? Talk to anyone in America and they are talking about reducing  the size of their house and it just doesn’t stop there. Americans want to reduce the size of everything. They want less debt. Less belongings. They want  no car payments. They want less taxes. Less house. Smaller yard.  Why is this, when our entire  history has been based on moving forward, getting more…why should we want to go  backward?  Because of this one simple fact: The American Dream as it has come to be defined is flat out impossible. The numbers simply don’t work.  It is really simple math.

I looked around in the neighborhood I was living in and saw people just  barely hanging on and then I watched as they slipped into foreclosure. These are not  people at the bottom of the economic pyramid. These are people with good jobs who came from great universities and  had all the breaks and yet, they were failing! Worse, they were barely hanging on, never seeing their kids, never able to enjoy the spoils of their work.  In short they were not working to live, they were  living to work.”

 If you factor in the cost of a modern home, taxes, utilities, health care, insurance, cars, maintenance, groceries, gas, incidentals…the numbers are staggering. Couples making over  150k  struggle to get buy and worse, they are one step away from disaster. And again, worse than all this,  there is no quality of life. No American Dream. Just an American Nightmare.

The great debate in our politics is fueled by the fact people are so mad they cannot have this perceived nirvana.  Where The Great Gatsby was about a man reaching for the stars, I put forth the idea our greatest happiness is  not found in something in the future but something behind us.  Because we have lost something we had. We are now trying to go back to a happiness not founded on consumption but on community, on belonging. We are searching for an American Dream without the consumption.

Americans aren’t really enjoying the dream, because the American Dream was never based  on economic wealth. It was based on lifestyle. This is what people forget. The ability to have a life that makes sense with friends and neighbors and children who are happy was never predicated on a Super Life.  The American Dream was built on a middle class life that never included  expensive cars and Mansions. Yet this is what Americans were sold going up to the crash. Rocket Men is  for anyone  who tired to find the American Dream and found it empty. But failing in this case is winning! Going back to a simpler life behind us.

 This is the new American Dream.  

The American Dream of Starting Over.

www.billhazelgrove.com

Rocket Man...the novel of the upside down American Dream

The Power Band in America

David Brooks of the NY Times just wrote an interesting piece on the power band, although he didn't call it that. He is fond of the term meritocracy and what it means today. Basically it is Brooks contention that the power band has narrowed so far that only a few colleges can promise a stellar career for graduates. The Ivy League of course. After that it is every marketing major for himself. It is what is behind the glut of twenty somethings living at home now after going fabulously in debt. It is what is behind our current economic slugfest.

But back to the power band. The power band snakes up through the east coast and runs through New York, Boston, Washington. It is where the players are. It is no accident that many of our Presidents, Senators, actors, major Wall Street shakers and movers all came up through this power band. Prep schools on to Ivy League. It is a trail of the few who will get all the benefits and most of the money. For everyone else it is the life of the salesman.

But of course we believe in meritocracy. Everyone should be allowed to move up on merit. The problem is that is not the reality. Brooks points out who is hired and from what schools and the depressing statistics is that unless you are coming out of one of these elite schools then you are on your own. So the narrowing of opportunity is coming down to the select few who know about the power band and are able to exploit it.

Or are born into it. For the rest of us it is Tom Cruises famous line in Risky Business....
UOI here I come!

www.billhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man...the American Dream in reverse

Our Gatsby Middleclass Shame

There is lots of middle class shame to go around these days. There are people who cant pay their mortgages, are on food stamps, Medicaid, assistance programs at schools. Middle class people don't talk about these things and this goes back to our Purtian work ethic that says failure is nothing less than losing God. Rich people are people who have served HIM and poor people need not apply. The gospel of the United States is one of shaming people who don't have jobs or who cant find jobs or who are homeless. We just don't really believe people can fail through no fault of their own.

But there is another kind of middle class shame. Almost a Gatsby shame evident in Fitzgerald's novel of course, The Great Gatsby. In the novel Gatsby refers to his home as something of a prize, saying it only took him a month to earn the money to buy the mansion. But at the end after his death we meet his father who said Gatsby used to chastise him because he "ate like a hog" and his father bragged about how Jimmy had pulled himself up and left the dirt poor farming existence of his childhood.

And like Gatsby there is a group of people who are ashamed of where they came from because during the boom they bought mansions. These are middle class people who do not believe they deserve their homes but are now stuck in them. Many are just hanging on in a sort of golden handcuffs perpetual state of illusion. The dream they saw when times were good and middle class people believed they could  be like rich people is now a nightmare where they cant get rid of the costume.

And like Gatsby, who at the end reverted to his roots, unable finally to pull it off for the Daisy Buchanan's of the world, these people are no longer able to pull it off for their neighbors, their friends, and ultimately, themselves.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...one word...one word...plastics.

The New American Dream: Downsizing

It is the first thing off someones lips who is selling their home now. I'm downsizing. Used to be people whose kids had gone off to college would downsize, now everyone is doing it. Apologies to all those still in search of the perfect McMansion, but everyone I bump into including myself talks about one thing: getting into something smaller with less taxes and less mortgage. It has become the new American Dream.

In my last novel, Rocket Man, the main character finally  gets his dream and is able to short sale his house away and go back toward the city and live in a bungalow. This is the polar opposite of the steady march of America which probably began with the first Puritans who decided a bigger log cabin was better and from then on the implied assumption was that materialism was next to Godliness and a big house put you into the Big Mans Favor.

Gatsby, right? Jay Gatsby's pride and joy, his magnet for Daisy was his home. A mansion he resurrected on the Long Island sound to show the world he had made it. The American Dream was at its zenith during the twenties and there was nothing more American than a bigger home. Bigger does not only belong to Texas, it is wrapped up in the swagger of American prowess. Let the Europeans live in their bungalows and row houses...we live in Giant Homes. We live in mansions.

But then of course that all came crashing down much like the Hindenburg with all the concomitant horror. Suddenly the big house no longer represented prosperity or at least upward mobility, now it had become an albatross around our neck...a prison of debt and sinking good fortune. Our homes could literally make us homeless now with the specter of upside down mortgages and foreclosure.

So the race is on to downsize. Who knows where it will end, but like Dale Hammer says at the end of Rocket Man  and is sitting in the small yard of his new home: I was finally where I was meant to be.

Lucky him.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man


http://www.bi/

The old cars of the middle class

Old cars are making a come back. Or maybe it's just because I drive old cars. Used to have really nice cars with really nice payments. Five hundred. Four hundred. Big thirty thousand dollar monsters that broke down pretty quickly just the same. Amazing how that new car smell went away so quickly. I guess there is a spray out there you can get so you can keep it going. And those first dings. Rough man. And then that first time you don't get by the wash and your thirty five thousand dollar ripoff looks old.

That sucks.

So then you get rid of it or you pay it off and it becomes your old car. Ten years old with a one hundred and fifty thousand miles. You quit washing it years ago.  You just keep it going. You don't have any payments and you don't want any. Now you have two old cars and the air goes out or a window doesn't close or a door doesn't open and the upholstery smells like a junkyard with that sun baked smell of old clothes in a trunk. And the floor is covered in leaves and dirt and old junk food wrappers.

But it still runs.

And so you cruise around with your loud muffler and then some dude pulls up next to you in a Beamer. You look over and you feel the pang. Man I want that car. I want to get into a car that smells good and looks good and I want that new feeling man. Because if your car is new then you are new. You just feel better about everything. And that lasts about... a month. And then you are staring down those payments and you start thinking about the fact you are paying up to five hundred bucks a month just to get from point A to point B.

No thanks.

And so the Beamer dude pulls ahead and you get your jalopy up to speed. Throw in a CD of old songs you dig. And look for a McDonald's. Life aint so bad.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man...losing a house should not be this funny

The I Can't Move Generation

Everyone has their cross to bear and for the recession generation of homeowners it is this: they can't afford to move. It used to be you moved to improve your situation. In the old paradyme one moved to a bigger home to take advantage of the increase in equity from the market. Trading up. This was a no brainer. You found out your house had appreciated by a hundred grand and went house shopping. You  found your next dream home then sold your current home and took on a bigger payment but it all came out in the wash because you would get a bigger chunk of equity as the market moved again. Then it all came crashing down.

In the smoking ruins of the bust the housing market is on it's head. Take the homeowner today who wants to sell. He can't because his house is now in a negative equity situation. He owes more than it is worth. There is nothing to plunk down on the next house. But let's say the house is not underwater and he wants to sell. There is still no guarantee it will sell and worse there is no guarantee there is another house out there. This is the kamikaze element to moving now. You might find yourself out in the street because you cant qualify for the next house.

So nobody moves now. People move for a variety of reasons. The big one now is downsizing. No one wants the big house anymore. Most people want to cut costs, but here is the irony of the housing bust: you can't afford to move to a smaller home. The smaller home might cost you more because you will lose all the evaporated equity in your current house. Much like a stock you don't lose until you sell. There is a chance it might come back right? Right.

But lets say you are going full speed ahead. You literally have to proceed like a blind man. You don't even look at the new house. You can only concentrate on selling yours and make peace that you may not get a penny out of it. Then you look for a new home and you have to make peace with the fact you could well end up renting. Because qualifying with no down payment is just about impossible now. So nobody moves.

Who is moving then? The people who get foreclosed. The strategic defaulters who quit paying. The wealthy who walk from their home and buy the next one with cash. The rest of us sit and wait for the next bubble.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...keeping your house shouldn't be this hard

Rethinking College for the Recession Generation

I was talking to a friend of mine who has kids in college and he lamented that he would be two hundred thousand dollars in debt when it was all done. The college students in question mooned around the graduation party for another friend soon to partake in the great middle class migration started after WWII with the GI Bill allowing people for the first time to partake in higher education. Up until that FDR moment there was college for the rich and the few who could actually work their way through college at a time when someone could actually pay as they went.

But now there are loans galore and middle class people follow the script of revved up highshool GPAs to revved up ACT and SAT scores and the eventual departure to private state Big Ten or the coveted Ivy League prize. Then they return four years later to look for a job. In the worst economy since the Great Depression. With incredible debt. We have heard of young women turning to prostitution to pay for these  debts now. Such is the desperation of a job market that marginalizes even the best and brightest. Maybe it's time to rethink the auto return of going to college.

Now if you are going to college like days of old to get a liberal arts education and become that limited of all specialists "the well rounded man" So be it. Take your debt like a man or a woman and pursue your journey. But ninety nine percent of the middle class take the utilitarian view that college will get you a job. And that is why the debt and the four years are worth it. A leg up on the rest of the population. There is still a leg up but the problem is there a lot more people with legs now. In fact the whole world is growing legs.  

The difference is the Global job market. College graduates are now competing globally for the more highly technical jobs that a twenty first century economy demands. If you are not specializing and at the top of your class then you will be in the great unwashed of college graduate moving back home. As the New York Times put it "college graduates now have to up their game." Which brings me back to this point, college is maybe not for everyone anymore.

The weighing of debt and time and getting a job is a brutal equation. And if you are going to be a salesman or you have that burning entrepreneurial idea, then maybe the four year hiatus is a waste of time. The fact is the mediocre middleclass jobs for mediocre college students don't exist anymore. These jobs are being replaced by computers or eliminated. Or there is one for every thousand applicants What used to be vast fertile ground for middle management white collar jobs has now gone vertical. Specialization and cream of the crop applicants take the jobs corporate America has to offer. For the rest it is a straight commission landscape or entry level sweatshops.

So this paradyme of middle class kids to college for a job might have reached it's level of obsolescence. The brutal truth is if you are going to take on that debt you better have a game plan. Or go for an education and call it at that and be comfortable you will be in debt for many many years.  Educated and broke is not without precedent.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man kindle or paperback First chapter

I Think It's Going to Be A Long Long Time...

I don't know if anyone cares about housing anymore but it is the problem. Middle class people have no value in their biggest asset and they can't do anything about it. They can't refinance or buy a house or sell a house and they can't get an equity loan. In Rocket Man I put forth the idea our best days our behind us because we were sold a bill of goods. We really didn't want all of this, we just wanted the middle class childhood that slipped through our fingers like the contentment that eludes us now.

And you really have to wonder when it will come back. Nobody even talks about housing anymore. It just is. But the reason there is no demand is there is no backbone to the middle class anymore. There is no nest egg. It all vanished in the crash. And now you have people who don't want to spend a nickel and worse they are losing their home or walking from their home or thinking of walking. And no one in either party even talks about the problem anymore.

As Dale Hammer says in Rocket Man. "This is what I always imagined my childhood should be, a car parked by a modest home on a snow covered street with everyone safe and warm in middle class slumber. I realize now that is what eluded us in our drive to have it all....our contentment, our happiness."  And the way things are going I think it's going to be a long long time until we see that again.

Rocket Man Paperback or Download

 

Reality is Stranger than Fiction

When I wrote Rocket Man I exaggerated. That's what you do in fiction. You exaggerate to prove a point, make a story move, create a moment. My main character is a guy who moves to the suburbs about to lose everything and then he does. His house, his job, his marriage. He is an everyman, a guy who bought too much house and took on too much debt with too many kids. He questions the American Dream and it's pursuit of materialism. The world implodes around him.

At the time I had created an economic situation that had not come to pass. Until now.I thought like everyone else the Recession was temporary. I assumed there would be a bump and people would dig out. But now like everyone else I see that our situation has become one of stasis. And Rocket Man has turned from a whatif story to a story of our reality. And while a lot of people have not lost their home and questioned their choices and ended up in radically different circumstances, a lot more people can relate to  my character, Dale Hammer,  than ever before.

And now we see that there is no will to help middle class people at all. We are truly on our own. This is an epiphany Dale comes to understand. That no one will help us but ourselves. I painted a very stark picture of America and the American Dream in decline. I never thought it would become our permanent reality.

Rocket Man Kindle Download

Imprisoned in McMansions

I haven't paid my mortgage for three years the woman said outside foreclosure court. I had gone for my normal three month meeting over an investment property short sale and the woman had sought me out in the hallway. You look like you know what you are doing she said. I didn't but I listened to her tail of McMansion woe. She had bought in the boom and ran up a mortgage to about 450k with a second tacked on. Her house was now turtle to the tune of about one hundred grand. Her job imploded and she went into a loan modification that never happened and started going to foreclosure court staving off the inevitable. Three years later she had not paid a dime.

But it sucks. I feel like such a loser still living in my house, but I cant afford to move, she went on. It's like I'm in prison. True. Her four thousand square foot monster is her prison. McMansions became pretty standard in the boom for the most egregious debtors in the move into upper middle class mobility. And why not? Money was cheap and the houses were amazing but now these Tyrolean haunted houses are prisons for thousands of people who cannot afford to move.

I can't afford to downsize because obviously I cant sell and I wont have a down payment and my credit is shot the woman said fearfully. All I can do is keep coming here and hope they wont foreclose. And they probably wont with foreclosure projections sixty two years in New York to clean up the mess and ten years in Illinois. The McMansion prisons start to fall down because people cant afford the maintenance, but like the golden handcuffs of a job we hate ,the person simply cannot afford to move.

It's schizoprhenic. I pull up to this big beautiful house everyday and I'm so broke I couldn't afford a bungalow. She paused and shook her head.  I'd like to afford a bungalow. That would be heaven to live in a small house.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man comes out July 26th

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man in July

President Obama should go to Foreclosure Court

You do get the feeling the President just doesn't get it. There is a Herbert Hoover quality to his pronouncements that the economy should be doing better with the stimulus packages his administration has passed and that many jobs have been created and people really are doing better. The President should go sit in foreclosure court. That might just jump start his awareness.

In foreclosure court you sit in the back and wait while the attorneys for the banks march up to the judge. The attorneys sit on the other side of the low wainscoted divider in high backed leather chairs. They are there for the banks. The people getting foreclosed sit in wooden benches next to each other like criminals waiting trial. There is no talking in court. Many of the defendants need a interpreter who gets up and speaks loudly in Spanish so everyone in the court will hear. On this particular day the judge makes the announcement that there will be no more interpreters after today because of cutbacks.

So then you wait and watch. One by one people go up before the judge and plead for time. That is the best you can do. The banks lawyers have foreclosure orders in hand and they want to foreclose...now! The judge gives some people twenty eight days, but others he grants the order of foreclosure. The people shuffled out glumly knowing they have to leave their home or the sheriff will evict them.

The President doesn't seem to understand this reality. The people in the courtroom are from all walks of life. Some people come as husband and wife, many times only one spouse shows up to get the bad news. Foreclosure court never ends. The court fills up as fast as the judge gavels the cases along. The lawyers troop in and out. The banks have at least five attorneys present. It is always the bank versus the individual. It is an assembly line in reverse. This is not production, but destruction. Destruction of an American Dream gone horribly wrong.

So I think President Obama should stop in just for a little while. You sit there for an hour and you get it. Sometimes there is a tearful woman and everyone feels really bad for a moment. Everyone remembers these are peoples homes and not just judgements of default on loans. The lawyers pause, the cops look away. The judge waits for the woman to compose herself, then everything gets rolling again. The sad assembly line of our bleeding nation.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in September. The story of a man trying to hold onto his home. http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Face of Foreclosure

A house went into foreclosure in my neighborhood last week. It is the first one we know about. I never knew much about the man who owned the house except that he owned a Hummer, installed a swimming pool, had Grecian urns banking his driveway on both sides. He had full time lawn care and his grass and shrubs and trees were always immaculate. In the land of the upper middle class he seemed to be doing very well. His house hovered around seven hundred thousand.

The first sign of trouble was the For Sale by Owner signs that kept appearing. One week the sign would be in the middle of the yard then it would be by the curb. Then the sign with sticky letters would disappear and a Realtor sign would appear. That would last for a month and then the original sign would come back. There seemed to be indecision or desperation. Sometimes the signs just went away and we wall assumed he had given up on selling his house. But then they would come back and another realtor would take a stab and the whole cycle would start over again.

Then we noticed the For Sale sign by Owner was just laying up against one of the urns. It seemed a sort of casual bon-viant way to sell a house. If someone really wanted it then they would find the sign. Then one day two white nondescript trucks pulled up. They were in the shape of moving vans but with no logo. Sort of undercover moving vans. The trucks dieseled outside of his house all day and we saw men moving silently through the morning hours hauling furniture into the sides of the trucks. Then the trucks pulled away.

Garbage night is on Monday morning and we all noticed his cans weren't by the drive. The black Hummer came and went a few times and then we didn't see any activity at all at the house. No one could confirm or deny if in fact he and his family had moved away. The smoking gun came from mother nature. Our neighborhood used to be farm fields as most neighborhoods in Illinois take purchase on the fallow fields of an agrarian past. Slowly the weeds that had been dormant for over ten years under the reign of agent orange the lawn service had been administering. But then reality began to creep up through the fine Kentucky green.

The first dandelions came as early soldiers and then all sorts of crab grass and prairie flowers followed suit. It was amazing. Within two weeks the diagonal landscaper cut administered by zero turn mowers and men in tan uniforms had been replaced with the rangy ragged undergrowth of our indigenous flora and fauna--weeds. The weeds came on like a plague. The grass grew wild. The trees drooped under the lack of nitrogen. The whole lawn went to hell.

Errant trash blew across the front yard. A water bottle. A clear plastic package of mulch. Flyers. Old newspapers. One of the urns fell and cracked. The For Sale by Owner sign lay flat on it's back. His custom bricked drive became a smorgasbord of grass and sedge. The garbage cans remained against the garage. No cars were ever in the drive anymore. The house had turned into a shell. No human spirit transformed the rude elements of construction into a home anymore. Foreclosure had come to the hood.

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Preflight

My father is a traveling salesman, that peculiar brand of Willy Loman that actually loves the natural flight of American selling. When I was
a boy, I thought of him as a man who appeared on Fridays when we had a steak and ice cream for dessert. After dinner, my father would
watch whatever football game was on television and fall asleep with his mouth open, tie loosened, hand over his brow as if he had just finished
one hell of a race.

I usually waited until he woke to tell him of my latest
achievement and show him my banana bike and collection of baseball
cards. But I had a brother who demanded his small time with him also,
so when my time came, it was usually just before he ran for his car,
briefcase in hand, and waved away another week.
But there was one time I remember where I had him all to myself.
For Christmas, my parents had given me an Estes Rocket Set. It was an
amazing toy with a launcher, rocket engines and the giant Saturn Five
Rocket that had conquered the moon a decade before. I stayed up late
gluing the white fuselage together, packing the parachute and inserting
the four D engines. The day after Christmas, my father and I walked to
a field to launch my rocket. We walked through the tall weeds painted
orange by the sun low on the horizon. He kept his hands in his pockets
while I carried the rocket and the launcher packed with batteries to fire
the rocket. We crunched through the frozen mud until we reached the
middle of the field.

Twilight simmered beyond the big pines and thin blue
snow dusted the ground. I put the launcher down and stretched the wires
to the control pad. My Saturn Five rocket was a beast. It took four D engines with two parachutes and four wadded sheets to keep the ejection charge from burning the chute up.
“Looks like we are launching Apollo 11,” my father murmured while
I threaded the Saturn Five onto the launch wire and connected the igniter wires to the four D engines. All four engines had to ignite or my Saturn Five would go off at a crazy angle and heave
into the ground. I checked the igniters and made sure they were shoved
far up into the engines. My father stamped his feet and kept his hands
in his pockets.
“You think this thing will go, boy?”
I looked at the man smoking a Pall Mall, his long Brooks Brothers
coat waving.
“Think so.”
“So this is what you do all week while I’m gone, boy?”
“Yup.”
My father smoked without his hands.
“Well, hurry up, boy. It’s going to be dark soon.”
I turned and walked back to the launch control and inserted the key.
The light glowed ready.
“You might move back, Dad.”
He looked over and snuffed the cigarette out, crunching through the
frozen mud. He was already looking at the distant cars on the highway,
thinking about his next appointment, gassing up, pointing that company
car back to the highway. He turned back and nodded to me.
“Well, blast it off, boy.”
I stared at my Saturn Five, a colossus of white and black with USA
going up the side in red letters. I began to count down.
“Five, four, three, two, one …”
I pressed the button on my launcher as the ready light flickered out.
There was the slight hiss of the sulfur igniters and for a moment the
rocket didn’t move. Then the four D engines caught fire, and whoosh!
The fire bent out and burned the weeds below the launcher, and suddenly
the Saturn Five was gone. A fiery tail burned high up in the cold sky as

the rocket leaned over slightly and left a white vapor trail across the early
stars.
“Jesus Christ!”
My father continued staring up while I stamped out the weed fire.
The ejection charge fired and the chutes blossomed, but I could see the
Saturn Five had gone too high for the wind and the time of day. It was
getting dark, and that rocket was sailing fast into the west, a white
satellite against a darkening blue palate.
“I’ll be goddamned,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Boy, that
sonofabitch really flew.”
I put my hand up, and I saw the Saturn Five drifting away; a gold
colossus hanging by four parachutes.
“Aren’t you going after it, boy?”
I shook my head solemnly.
“No, it’s gone,” I murmured, watching the rocket drift past the field.
“There’s too much wind.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
My father kept his neck craned to the sky and put his hands on my
shoulders. That’s what I remember. I think it was the only time we
were really together, watching that rocket disappear into the coal sky.

Rocket Man--
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