My Life in Real Estate--Part 1

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!---John Wilkes Booth upon shooting Abraham Lincoln

We bought our first house in late 1985. It was a 1920’s Dutch colonial on the main drag of Westfield, NJ. At first glance the house had two strikes against it: it was on a busy road, and it was across the street from a municipal building--a big old red brick schoolhouse. The trees around the house, planted too close to the house as saplings 60 years earlier, were overgrown and brushing the roof of the house. From its front, the house looked neglected and dark, with moss growing on the roof where the trees blocked the sunlight. But...it was gracious, dignified and somehow familiar.

Doris, the realtor, had listened patiently to our list of must-have’s, wants and no-way’s. She recognized two babes in the woods when she saw them. And although we were clear that we didn’t want to be anywhere near municipal or commercial buildings, and certainly not on a heavily trafficked street, she suggested that we ‘just take a look’ at the house on East Broad Street. I walked in the front door, took one look at the 30 foot living room, the French doors and the fireplace, and I heard Chopin rippling in the background. “Peter! Do you hear music? I hear music!” Peter took one look at my enraptured face, and offered his own take on the situation, “Stop gushing!” I knew this house. I’d lived in this house somewhere, sometime, in some other life, and I had found my way home again.

So much for the romance. Now we moved on to the business of buying the house. The sellers, Larry and Marge Pipes, were corporate nomads, misplaced, displaced and disconsolate South Carolinian's. Larry worked for ITT and was being dragged around the continental US forcibly and by the nose. He had been relocated from South Carolina to NJ in May, and by October he had been reassigned to Colorado. No doubt Larry was being well compensated for his inconvenience, but his charming wife, Marge, was clearly not taking these life changes in stride.

The Rhett and Scarlett of East Broad Street, as we came to think of them,  had not completely unpacked their moving boxes when ITT packed Rhett off to Colorado. And Scarlett, aside from being in her first trimester of pregnancy, morning-sick, openly racist and anti-Semitic, was left alone in New Jersey to sell the house. Well, not completely alone. She had half a dozen nasty Lhasa Apso’s and a house full of fleas to keep her company. (When we moved into the house we learned that she had thoughtfully left the flea infestation for us.)

From the end of November until mid-March, the run-up to closing on the house was spent with Scarlett on the phone to Peter each weekday evening. Rhett came back east on the weekends, but in his absence she needed to vent her concerns about the progress and state of the sale, informing us repeatedly that she’d once had a civil service job with the state of South Carolina, and how awful the North was. Scarlett ranted about New Jersey real estate law, insisting that she shouldn’t be required to hire a lawyer to close on the sale. And if she was, her good ol’ uncle from South Carolina could advise her by phone. And why wasn’t she getting interest on the escrow account with our deposit? (Why? Because that isn’t part of a standard sale agreement in New Jersey, and since she refused to have an attorney read the sale agreement, she hadn’t asked for anything outside the standard. Doris, either wasn't taking Scarlett's calls, or wasn't explaining the terms of the contract to her satisfaction.) Scarlett was in a constant and consuming hissy fit.

At Scarlett’s request, the closing took place at a place convenient to her—rather than, as is customary in NJ, at our attorney’s office. Scarlett took her sweet time and arrived 45 minutes late for the closing. Then she warmed up the crowd by regaling us with tales of how cold Yankees were, how she really felt about Jews, and wrapped it up with a charming anecdote about the only friendly person she’d met in the entire nine months she’d been captive in the North—a NY State Trooper. Finally she returned to her favorite topic—the interest she was due on the deposit in the escrow account. Since the $25K had been sitting in a non-interest bearing account for 3 months, Scarlett wanted us to write her a check for the interest. Peter and I said flatly,  "No". There was a long pause while Doris, the realtor, contemplated the sale swirling down the drain. Then Doris pulled out her own checkbook and offered to write a check for the $200 Marge wanted from Peter’s and my Jewish hides. But Scarlett paused for a dramatic moment and finally announced, "Oh no, dawlin’, I don’t want your money," and let it drop.

Scarlett and Rhett left us a dirty plastic jar full of unidentified house keys, a flea-infested house and a roll of mailing labels to forward any wayward mail. No stamps, just mailing labels. No doubt, they went on to charm the pants off their new neighbors in Colorado.  And by now, Scarlett’s baby is well out of college. But whenever I think of Scarlett, I usually wish her lifelong morning sickness, just as I have for the past 26 years.