by Alan Richards

Created on: February 22, 2008

After renting for the first seven years of our marriage, the wife and I decided that our rent money would be better spent on a mortgage. We spent months combing the town. We were looking for something that was in our price range and needed a little work. We finally decided that we needed a little help. We called a Realtor and asked for a list of homes in the area that were within our price range. I looked at a dozen houses in a week. Most were twice what I could afford or were so run down that I couldn't have afforded to make them livable. I was told by the Realtor that they were doing the best they could, and so, I called another Realtor. Within a week, the new Realtor had found the house we wanted.

So, it was off to the bank to get a loan. I made the appointment with the banker. A week later, we parked the car in the parking lot and went into the bank. We sat in the waiting room for half of an hour as members of the staff walked by us and said hello. The atmosphere was friendly and welcoming. Finally, a lady came downstairs and told us to follow her.

We followed her back to her office and stepped inside the small space. She motioned for us to sit across from her, and we slid into the seats between her desk and the wall. It was almost as if we were backed into a corner. There was nowhere to run, except past the pen and piles of paper that were about to become a large part of our financial budget. Page after page was turned and signed. My normally unreadable signature became more and more unreadable. I grew sleepy as the banker went on and on about this and that. After two hours of paper shuffling and two miles of ink. The paperwork was complete. We had a few more things to do at a later date, but the application was finished.

We were ushered back downstairs and shown the way to the door. It was done in a polite manner, but I got the feeling we weren't wanted now that they had the hook set in the monthly payment for our new home. We stepped out the door into a beautiful summer day. I looked to the space where we had left the car, and it was empty. My car was gone. Buy a house. Lose a car. What a great day this was turning out to be.

There was a small mini-mall on one side of the reserved parking lot, and people often parked in the bank's lot to run into the mini-mall. It wasn't uncommon for the bank to tow a car away who's owner was in the mini-mall and not the bank. I went back into the bank and asked if they had towed any vehicles from their parking lot. The

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