Category: default || By jt3y

I got home late last night and put a frozen pizza into the oven (that's me, Mr. Health Nut). At about 9:30 the phone rang; I checked the pizza, and it was almost done. Too bad, phone caller! My need for processed cheese and carbohydrates are more important than your puny phone calls! So I let the machine pick it up.

It was an insurance agent. He had a quote for me on a homeowner's policy. Crud. That's the call I've been waiting for. I pulled the almost, but not quite, cooked pizza out of the oven and picked up the phone.

He's a local guy, at an independent agency, and he recognized my name: Didn't I used to write for the newspaper?

"I think I've written for all of them, once," I said.

Anyway, turns out we had several mutual friends. He quoted me a good price on a policy --- full replacement value on the house and contents, low deductible, $300,000 liability coverage --- from a small company in Ohio. He also knows my real estate agent, and has worked with her before.

Since the other agent I asked for a quote still hasn't called me back, I have a pretty good idea that this guy's going to get my business, despite the fact that I had to eat a lukewarm, half-cooked frozen pizza for dinner.

They call this the housebuying process; I call it the getting-smacked-repeatedly-in-the-face process. It's the death of a thousand cuts --- fill out this form, sign this, sign that, write this check, write that check. I'm probably going to write a guide for other people in my situation once this process is over.

I'll also rat out my Realtor, home inspector, insurance agent, and the other folks who have been much more helpful that I expected. If you know me, you know that I prefer to deal with small, local businesses, and I haven't been disappointed in my choices.

In a year or two, when I'm settled into my heavily-mortgaged shack, this will all seem worthwhile.

For now, it's just frustrating: I'm out about two grand and haven't got anything to show for it yet but an empty bank account and a stack of photocopied forms which, frankly, I really haven't read. I'm fairly certain that one of them commits me to hand over my first-born son unless I can guess the name of a mysterious, gnarled little man who throws temper tantrums. (I'm not entirely sure, but I think I used to work for someone like that. Rimshot.)

We're getting closer to the big day, assuming that I've got the mortgage, which is a big assumption. It's going through the county Redevelopment Authority; supposedly, the local underwriter has approved it, but the state guy is still looking over the application. Maybe he's been too busy approving plans for slot machine parlors, I don't know.

A few weeks ago, the mortgage company sent me a 10-point letter outlining everything the state underwriter wanted to see --- three years' worth of tax forms, three years' worth of W-2s, a resume, a letter explaining that I was the only one who was going to live in this house ('tis true, sadly).

Everything but a birth certificate and a prostate exam, and I swear I saw an old pair of rubber gloves on the mortgage guy's desk the last time I was in his office.

The part that completely freaked me out was the credit report. Point 7 on the letter was something like, "please explain the following derogatory reports received from a credit reporting agency."

Derogatory reports? Jeepers H. Crackers! What did they know about? The check I bounced in 1993 when the bank's computers went down and failed to make a deposit? The time I was three days late with a payment to a brain surgeon to cover a trepanning job? The secret call I received from my stockbroker advising me to sell shares of a company before some bad news came out?

Oh, wait, that last one was Martha Stewart, never mind.

I've heard horror stories about incorrect credit information ruining people's lives, and the printout that the mortgage company sent me was no help at all. The three lines in question said things like, "REPR MAASCORECRECAFIOH 30D $10 $390 7/02 PIF" What the hell does that mean?

Panic-stricken, my knees quivering like Michael Moore's belt at an all-you-can-eat pancake restaurant, I ordered a copy of my credit report from Equifax.

It turns out that the "derogatory" information was pretty mild: A student loan company lost my address and starting sending bills to an apartment where I lived for about a year, and I was 30 days late with a quarterly payment. I used a credit card's "pay by phone" service and they entered the information wrong, bounced a check and then billed me for a returned check fee and a late payment. (I got them to admit their mistake, they waived the bounced check fee and I closed the account, but it was reported.) I tried to sign up for a gasoline company's Internet payment service; the sign up failed, but the company stopped sending me paper bills, and I missed a payment.

There was nothing hugely wrong on the credit report, nor were there any accounts listed as "open" that were actually "closed." I was shocked at the detail of the information on the report --- how did they know that I cried when Bambi's mother died, and besides, I was only seven --- but that's to be expected in this day and age.

So, without any information to the contrary, I'm assuming that all is ready for closing, and my long march into 30 years of debt.

If not, I'll be really ticked: My pizza got all congealed and soggy for nothing.

...

This, if true, gives a black eye to the volunteer fire service in the Mon-Yough area. According to Dan Reynolds in the Trib:

A Glassport volunteer firefighter arrested on charges of setting a trash bin fire is a primary suspect in a yearlong string of Mon Valley arsons, court documents say.

The arson investigation also led to the arrest of two former Glassport volunteer firefighters accused of stealing a fire helmet and a portable radio from a Glassport fire company in June 2003.

It only takes a handful of jerks to give everyone a bad name, and --- again, if this is true --- these toads are not representative of most volunteer firefighters. But in an era of declining participation and revenue for fire companies, this is the kind of publicity you don't need.

Hey, great job, schmucks! According to Reynolds' story, these clowns made a grand total of $25 from their thefts. Gee, that was sure worth it.

...

The Balkan Hotel, long a landmark in the Coulter-Irwin area, is closing, according to Kathy Mismas and Jennifer Vertullo in The Daily News:

Nearly a century ago, the Balkan Hotel and Bar, a three-story mansion located at the crest of Coulterville Road, North Huntingdon Twp., was a private home built by Robert Wallace and Susan Stewart Ekin.

The Ekin estate sat upon endless groves of red delicious apple and peach trees, and the family operated a dairy farm that provided milk to residents of White Oak's former Fawcett School area.

In fact, I think there's a plan of homes in North Huntingdon Township called the "Susan Ekin Plan."

...

And yet more bad news, via Copeland: The long-rumored sale of Chiodo's Tavern in Homestead is apparently nearer to completion. According Teresa Lindeman in the Post-Gazette, Walgreen's wants the property for a drug store. Because what we really needed in Western Pennsylvania was another freaking chain drug store. (The kind that doesn't seem to sell prescriptions, but does sell 400 varieties of potato chips.)

I've been hearing these reports for more than five years, but this is the first time that something has officially happened in public. One had to expect that a corner lot at the end of the High-Level Bridge (sorry, still can't get used to calling it the "Homestead Grays Bridge") would be mighty valuable.

County records show the bar is worth $76,000, but I've got to figure that it would sell for three or four times that. And it's not as if Joe Chiodo is getting younger; he's not in the public charity business, either. It may be a landmark for folks, but in the end, it's his bar to do with what he wants. That doesn't mean that we Mon Valley denizens won't be sad to see it go.

By the way: I've always found it rather charming how Joe Chiodo has waged an unsuccessful campaign to get people to pronounce his name the Italian way: "kee-OH-doh." Only out-of-towners say that. People from Homestead, Munhall, West Homestead and Whitaker say "CHOE-doh's." Even Jeff Goldblum knows that.

But I sympathize with Chiodo. People often mispronounce my name; they put the stress on the second syllable, "hole."