This one-act is tied to Day #21 To purchase, click here
HOW TO TAME A WILD DEED
By Janet S. Tiger
© Sept. 4, 2012 all rights reserved
[email protected] 858-274-9678
Setting- an office circa 2008
Characters – yes, one
(The curtain opens on an office that has seen better days. There are papers everywhere, messy all over the desks and floor. A sign with the name of the establishment has been ripped so all we can see is the word BANK, and there is a conspicuous calendar with the year visible 2009, and December is less visible.
But it was once a nice office and vestiges of the niceness shine through around the edges – a nice chair, the window coverings are still pretty decent, things like that which will make a set designer happy to figure out.
Also visible is a table with two large stacks of papers. A woman comes onstage, this is Pamela, about 45, but looks older, not too skinny, not too fat – in fact, she could be the picture for the definition of the words – Midwestern average female.
She is tired, and we see a little sad, but there is a resolve about her – she has made some type of decision and this has given her a little strength.
When she comes out, she is carrying a notebook, which she sets up on the table closest to the audience. She adjusts a few things, then presses a button and steps back.
PAMELA - (Loud) Hello, my name is …..irrelevant, but what I am going to tell you today could help you a lot.
(She stops, and goes to the notebook, presses some buttons and we hear, faintly, what she just said. She smiles)
PAMELA – (To herself) I guess I’m not so dumb after all, Mr. Henderson.
(She now pushes the button again and steps back. While she talks, she goes through papers, sorting them into the two piles on the table.)
PAMELA - (cheery- fake, but it still looks good) Hello, everyone on the wonderful Internet! On this….(not sure what to call it)…on this moment of madness - I am going to give you instructions that will help you survive in today’s crazy world of mortgages. I call my lesson – ‘How to Tame a Wild Deed’
Now for those of you who do not know what a deed is, you may want to look it up elsewhere on the Internet, because real estate law is difficult, verbose and extremely complex. I know because I’ve been working in it for years….but tonight, I am going to try and make it a little simpler.
Whatever you think you know, forget – why do I say this? Because I am a loan officer in one of those failed banks you have read about and watched on the news.
I wasn’t always a…..what would be a good word for what I do?.....I wasn’t always a thief.
You heard me – thief.
That’s what our banks have become – houses of destitution. And, like the poor cowboys who came into the bordellos of the old west, you – the customers - have given your hard-earned money from lots of work, to have a brief moment of house-owning happiness, before the morning light comes to show that all you have left is dust in your pockets….and a strange disease –known as(says it fast) Never-get-another-house- credit rating to go with it.
(Laughs) Deed. What a great word. Good deeds. (Growls) Baaad deeds. Deeds. In deed. In deedy do! (Like the Dragnet theme) Dum de dum dum….dum deed um dum dee!
Deed of…… trust…trust, what a beautiful word, so trampled.
(Says it very quietly) Wild deed.
There, I’ve said it. Now before I give my complex explanation, you may be wondering about who I am. All right, you probably don’t care, but I’m going to tell you anyway because…. it’s my video!
I am a woman –(thinks) you probably can see that -with a family. My mother worked at this bank as a teller. (Thinking) She worked here for 35 years, and was finally head teller, got her pension, retired. Of course, that was before ATMs made tellers almost obsolete .
When I was in high school, she got me a job, here. I was a part-time teller When I came back from four long years at college, I got a job as…..a teller.
But then things changed. Women’s lib opened up some new jobs, and since I had a degree in Business Administration – and they kind of knew me! -they finally promoted me to …..secretary to the Vice-President of Finance. I handled all of the papers for every Loan and Mortgage that went through his office. And often, after I had been doing it awhile, I was so good, he never even looked at the papers, he just signed them.
(Chuckles as she remembers) I used to think I could have had Mr. Donald Duck apply for a loan, and he certainly had the ability to pay back, because his co-signer was his father – a guy named Mr. Walter Disney – (she thinks about this for a moment, and laughs) and Mr. Henderson would have approved it without a second look, because I typed everything up so neatly. All the ‘i’s were dotted and the ‘t’s crossed. Even when my children were sick, and I caught their colds, never any mistakes or white-out, – my work was perfect.
(She bows her head and shakes it)
And then, our small-town bank – in one family for 50 years – was sold… to a big national bank chain. BIG!
(She waves her arms around indicating how large.)
I’m talkin’ really big! You’ve heard of it, I’m sure. It was quite a coup for our town.
The owners got bonuses, and all of the employees got to stay and keep our pensions – as long as we worked the 20 years total, we had it made.
That was in 2000 – and they had just changed the rules so banks could play on the stock market. Passed by a Republican Congress and a Democratic President –that’s why I blame them all!
But at first, times were good – people made money. Those who remembered the Bible – like the story with Joseph and Egypt – those people put aside part of their surplus for a rainy day. (Sad) Some people. Not all.
(Big smile) I have worked here for exactly 19 years, 11 months and two weeks. (Very fake smile) I got my two weeks notice two weeks ago, so you may have guessed – and you would be right – that this is my last day.
(She looks at her watch)
Technically, it was my last day –it’s past midnight, so everything now is
(thinks) .. not overtime! (Laughs) Why keep on? I guess it’s just old- fashioned Midwestern work ethic.
(As if listening to a question) Pension? No pension. All that money is gone. So it’s kind of irrelevant. (Like a TV announcer) Due to all the bad mortgages, the bank failed and has been taken over by another BIG bank.
Only this time, none of the employees get to stay, because this branch is closing. Just the inside of course, the outside (says it with disgust) A-T-M will remain, along with an 800 number in case you have any problems with the ATM. (Fake cheery) Of course you know how very helpful those are!
(Takes a deep breath) What happened here?
Haven’t you guessed? – Wild Deeds!
Now you might be thinking I’m talking about crazy parties-
(She indicates the room around her)
But I’m talking about the crazy loans given here – not the old-fashioned fixed loans like in the old days, where a person knew that the payment the first day would be the same as the last. Oh, no, these were FANCY loans. With (pronounces it carefully) A-Jus-Table rates. Wild!
It was the epitome of the American dream – suddenly almost anyone could buy a house! Your income? Not that important, because with - ‘stated income’ - you could guess how much you were going to earn next year! People could qualify for the first six months, a year, two years. at a low (pronounces it carefully) In-tro-duc-tory payment, with the hopes and dreams that their REAL income would double in that time, and they could pay twice as much. Or that the price of the home would go up so much in that time that they could take out a second – same terms, mind you – to help pay the first. (Changes a little) Or to pay off the hospital bills for someone who got sick – in the hopes the person would recover in time to earn lots of money to pay off these mortgages.
(More philosophical) Who’s to blame? Those who dreamed – or those who profited from the dreams? Better question – when did the American dream become the American nightmare?
(Takes a deep breath - back to reality) Now, to return to the subject. (Teaching) A wild deed is one where a person registers a deed even though they have no relationship to the property. By law, the county recorder has to register it – and it completely screws up everything if the house is sold.
In the cases here –
(She indicates the papers all over the tables)
some of these mortgages were bought and sold many times- some over a dozen times in less than a year! They were never recorded properly, so in some cases, correct that! – in most cases- wait, correct that again! – in almost every single case! - the chain of title has been corrupted. So people are being foreclosed upon by entities that do not have the legal standing to do so.
(She takes some last papers from the floor and sorts them.)
Well that covers it. You know a little bit about Wild Deeds – and I have these two stacks of original mortgage papers. All set for storage. Where? Probably in the same place that Indiana Jones had the Lost Ark stored. So I guess what I’m about to do is also irrelevant, but I’m doing it anyhow.
(She starts to put papers from one pile into boxes, sealing and labeling them)
You see this pile here? In it are the mortgage papers for people who used the extra money for fun stuff – like trips and new cars. And who defaulted on all the money loaned to them because they feel like they don’t have to pay now.
(Thinking, this affects her) Maybe I should never have approved all these loans, especially when I knew some of the people couldn’t pay. (Hard to say) But I was just doing my job.
And maybe everyone in this country who watched this happen is responsible in some way, because, when things were good, and these people had money, we were their friends, we sold them those big cars, and we ate out at fancy restaurants with them. (Quieter) And we all watched people in trouble and we never said, ‘hmm, what’s going on here. (Quieter) We never said, “what if that was me?’
(Thinking) It is almost Biblical in a way. Maybe we have to learn a little better about being our brother’s keeper…..
(She seals a box, almost solemnly, and then turns to the other pile.)
Now these, these are from people who had legitimate bad luck – I did research on them – they had terrible illness, lost jobs, (very affected) children born with ….problems)….things that when you find out, you cry a little. (Cheerier) And this is what is happening to their papers……
(She pulls up a shredder from behind the table and puts through some of the papers.)
Does it matter which ones I shred? Who knows? The way these loans have been bought and sold like shares on the stock market (takes a deep breath) – mortgages were never meant to be like this. A house was your castle.
(She takes a big pile and we hear the whirring.)
That feels good! Thank you for your patience. You know a little bit about wild deeds. Now I will tell you how to tame them.
(Deep breath to build up) You can’t. Well, not easily. It takes a lot of time, and often a lot of money to lawyers and the courts, to tame a wild deed. You have to have a lot of strength to go through it, and so will all the people represented by these scraps of paper.
In some states, the destruction of these papers will mean that a bank –or other strange entity – will never have the legal right to take away these houses. Is it legal what I’m doing? (Laughs) What do you think? I’m doing just what I was told to do – I’m following orders. And this is what I was told to do. (Imitates male voice) ‘Before you leave, Pamela, would you please take care of this mess!’ So I am!
(To illustrate, she takes some papers on a desk and sweeps them onto the floor.)
What about the companies? They are, right now, receiving billions – folks, that’s with a ‘b’ billions of dollars – of our tax dollars – to fix this problem. Most of that money – our money! - will never go to these poor folks caught in the middle. The companies will keep the money, foreclose, and keep the money from these homes, too – some of which people have lived in for many years.
This country – will it learn from all that’s gone on? I hope.
(She smiles) And if you haven’t guessed by now, this is my ‘wild deed.’
(At this, she goes to the notebook, and pushes a button. The stage goes dark and in the darkness we hear the whirring of the shredder which gets louder and louder until finally – it explodes! We hear her laughing.)
The end.
HOW TO TAME A WILD DEED
By Janet S. Tiger
© Sept. 4, 2012 all rights reserved
[email protected] 858-274-9678
Setting- an office circa 2008
Characters – yes, one
(The curtain opens on an office that has seen better days. There are papers everywhere, messy all over the desks and floor. A sign with the name of the establishment has been ripped so all we can see is the word BANK, and there is a conspicuous calendar with the year visible 2009, and December is less visible.
But it was once a nice office and vestiges of the niceness shine through around the edges – a nice chair, the window coverings are still pretty decent, things like that which will make a set designer happy to figure out.
Also visible is a table with two large stacks of papers. A woman comes onstage, this is Pamela, about 45, but looks older, not too skinny, not too fat – in fact, she could be the picture for the definition of the words – Midwestern average female.
She is tired, and we see a little sad, but there is a resolve about her – she has made some type of decision and this has given her a little strength.
When she comes out, she is carrying a notebook, which she sets up on the table closest to the audience. She adjusts a few things, then presses a button and steps back.
PAMELA - (Loud) Hello, my name is …..irrelevant, but what I am going to tell you today could help you a lot.
(She stops, and goes to the notebook, presses some buttons and we hear, faintly, what she just said. She smiles)
PAMELA – (To herself) I guess I’m not so dumb after all, Mr. Henderson.
(She now pushes the button again and steps back. While she talks, she goes through papers, sorting them into the two piles on the table.)
PAMELA - (cheery- fake, but it still looks good) Hello, everyone on the wonderful Internet! On this….(not sure what to call it)…on this moment of madness - I am going to give you instructions that will help you survive in today’s crazy world of mortgages. I call my lesson – ‘How to Tame a Wild Deed’
Now for those of you who do not know what a deed is, you may want to look it up elsewhere on the Internet, because real estate law is difficult, verbose and extremely complex. I know because I’ve been working in it for years….but tonight, I am going to try and make it a little simpler.
Whatever you think you know, forget – why do I say this? Because I am a loan officer in one of those failed banks you have read about and watched on the news.
I wasn’t always a…..what would be a good word for what I do?.....I wasn’t always a thief.
You heard me – thief.
That’s what our banks have become – houses of destitution. And, like the poor cowboys who came into the bordellos of the old west, you – the customers - have given your hard-earned money from lots of work, to have a brief moment of house-owning happiness, before the morning light comes to show that all you have left is dust in your pockets….and a strange disease –known as(says it fast) Never-get-another-house- credit rating to go with it.
(Laughs) Deed. What a great word. Good deeds. (Growls) Baaad deeds. Deeds. In deed. In deedy do! (Like the Dragnet theme) Dum de dum dum….dum deed um dum dee!
Deed of…… trust…trust, what a beautiful word, so trampled.
(Says it very quietly) Wild deed.
There, I’ve said it. Now before I give my complex explanation, you may be wondering about who I am. All right, you probably don’t care, but I’m going to tell you anyway because…. it’s my video!
I am a woman –(thinks) you probably can see that -with a family. My mother worked at this bank as a teller. (Thinking) She worked here for 35 years, and was finally head teller, got her pension, retired. Of course, that was before ATMs made tellers almost obsolete .
When I was in high school, she got me a job, here. I was a part-time teller When I came back from four long years at college, I got a job as…..a teller.
But then things changed. Women’s lib opened up some new jobs, and since I had a degree in Business Administration – and they kind of knew me! -they finally promoted me to …..secretary to the Vice-President of Finance. I handled all of the papers for every Loan and Mortgage that went through his office. And often, after I had been doing it awhile, I was so good, he never even looked at the papers, he just signed them.
(Chuckles as she remembers) I used to think I could have had Mr. Donald Duck apply for a loan, and he certainly had the ability to pay back, because his co-signer was his father – a guy named Mr. Walter Disney – (she thinks about this for a moment, and laughs) and Mr. Henderson would have approved it without a second look, because I typed everything up so neatly. All the ‘i’s were dotted and the ‘t’s crossed. Even when my children were sick, and I caught their colds, never any mistakes or white-out, – my work was perfect.
(She bows her head and shakes it)
And then, our small-town bank – in one family for 50 years – was sold… to a big national bank chain. BIG!
(She waves her arms around indicating how large.)
I’m talkin’ really big! You’ve heard of it, I’m sure. It was quite a coup for our town.
The owners got bonuses, and all of the employees got to stay and keep our pensions – as long as we worked the 20 years total, we had it made.
That was in 2000 – and they had just changed the rules so banks could play on the stock market. Passed by a Republican Congress and a Democratic President –that’s why I blame them all!
But at first, times were good – people made money. Those who remembered the Bible – like the story with Joseph and Egypt – those people put aside part of their surplus for a rainy day. (Sad) Some people. Not all.
(Big smile) I have worked here for exactly 19 years, 11 months and two weeks. (Very fake smile) I got my two weeks notice two weeks ago, so you may have guessed – and you would be right – that this is my last day.
(She looks at her watch)
Technically, it was my last day –it’s past midnight, so everything now is
(thinks) .. not overtime! (Laughs) Why keep on? I guess it’s just old- fashioned Midwestern work ethic.
(As if listening to a question) Pension? No pension. All that money is gone. So it’s kind of irrelevant. (Like a TV announcer) Due to all the bad mortgages, the bank failed and has been taken over by another BIG bank.
Only this time, none of the employees get to stay, because this branch is closing. Just the inside of course, the outside (says it with disgust) A-T-M will remain, along with an 800 number in case you have any problems with the ATM. (Fake cheery) Of course you know how very helpful those are!
(Takes a deep breath) What happened here?
Haven’t you guessed? – Wild Deeds!
Now you might be thinking I’m talking about crazy parties-
(She indicates the room around her)
But I’m talking about the crazy loans given here – not the old-fashioned fixed loans like in the old days, where a person knew that the payment the first day would be the same as the last. Oh, no, these were FANCY loans. With (pronounces it carefully) A-Jus-Table rates. Wild!
It was the epitome of the American dream – suddenly almost anyone could buy a house! Your income? Not that important, because with - ‘stated income’ - you could guess how much you were going to earn next year! People could qualify for the first six months, a year, two years. at a low (pronounces it carefully) In-tro-duc-tory payment, with the hopes and dreams that their REAL income would double in that time, and they could pay twice as much. Or that the price of the home would go up so much in that time that they could take out a second – same terms, mind you – to help pay the first. (Changes a little) Or to pay off the hospital bills for someone who got sick – in the hopes the person would recover in time to earn lots of money to pay off these mortgages.
(More philosophical) Who’s to blame? Those who dreamed – or those who profited from the dreams? Better question – when did the American dream become the American nightmare?
(Takes a deep breath - back to reality) Now, to return to the subject. (Teaching) A wild deed is one where a person registers a deed even though they have no relationship to the property. By law, the county recorder has to register it – and it completely screws up everything if the house is sold.
In the cases here –
(She indicates the papers all over the tables)
some of these mortgages were bought and sold many times- some over a dozen times in less than a year! They were never recorded properly, so in some cases, correct that! – in most cases- wait, correct that again! – in almost every single case! - the chain of title has been corrupted. So people are being foreclosed upon by entities that do not have the legal standing to do so.
(She takes some last papers from the floor and sorts them.)
Well that covers it. You know a little bit about Wild Deeds – and I have these two stacks of original mortgage papers. All set for storage. Where? Probably in the same place that Indiana Jones had the Lost Ark stored. So I guess what I’m about to do is also irrelevant, but I’m doing it anyhow.
(She starts to put papers from one pile into boxes, sealing and labeling them)
You see this pile here? In it are the mortgage papers for people who used the extra money for fun stuff – like trips and new cars. And who defaulted on all the money loaned to them because they feel like they don’t have to pay now.
(Thinking, this affects her) Maybe I should never have approved all these loans, especially when I knew some of the people couldn’t pay. (Hard to say) But I was just doing my job.
And maybe everyone in this country who watched this happen is responsible in some way, because, when things were good, and these people had money, we were their friends, we sold them those big cars, and we ate out at fancy restaurants with them. (Quieter) And we all watched people in trouble and we never said, ‘hmm, what’s going on here. (Quieter) We never said, “what if that was me?’
(Thinking) It is almost Biblical in a way. Maybe we have to learn a little better about being our brother’s keeper…..
(She seals a box, almost solemnly, and then turns to the other pile.)
Now these, these are from people who had legitimate bad luck – I did research on them – they had terrible illness, lost jobs, (very affected) children born with ….problems)….things that when you find out, you cry a little. (Cheerier) And this is what is happening to their papers……
(She pulls up a shredder from behind the table and puts through some of the papers.)
Does it matter which ones I shred? Who knows? The way these loans have been bought and sold like shares on the stock market (takes a deep breath) – mortgages were never meant to be like this. A house was your castle.
(She takes a big pile and we hear the whirring.)
That feels good! Thank you for your patience. You know a little bit about wild deeds. Now I will tell you how to tame them.
(Deep breath to build up) You can’t. Well, not easily. It takes a lot of time, and often a lot of money to lawyers and the courts, to tame a wild deed. You have to have a lot of strength to go through it, and so will all the people represented by these scraps of paper.
In some states, the destruction of these papers will mean that a bank –or other strange entity – will never have the legal right to take away these houses. Is it legal what I’m doing? (Laughs) What do you think? I’m doing just what I was told to do – I’m following orders. And this is what I was told to do. (Imitates male voice) ‘Before you leave, Pamela, would you please take care of this mess!’ So I am!
(To illustrate, she takes some papers on a desk and sweeps them onto the floor.)
What about the companies? They are, right now, receiving billions – folks, that’s with a ‘b’ billions of dollars – of our tax dollars – to fix this problem. Most of that money – our money! - will never go to these poor folks caught in the middle. The companies will keep the money, foreclose, and keep the money from these homes, too – some of which people have lived in for many years.
This country – will it learn from all that’s gone on? I hope.
(She smiles) And if you haven’t guessed by now, this is my ‘wild deed.’
(At this, she goes to the notebook, and pushes a button. The stage goes dark and in the darkness we hear the whirring of the shredder which gets louder and louder until finally – it explodes! We hear her laughing.)
The end.
