David Black

When I was very little, I don't believe a single birthday or Christmas went by that my grandmother, Wilma Black, whom I called Willie, didn't give me at least two presents. There was always the really neat toy or other gadget that caught my young eyes and I got immediate enjoyment from.

Then, there was the other gift. Frankly, it wasn't as much fun. I was far too young to understand or appreciate what it meant. It looked like money, but you couldn't spend it right away. All I remember understanding about savings bonds was that they were something you could maybe turn into real money at some point down the road, but when you're that little, the years you'd have to wait before being able to do anything with them might as well have been forever.

But when you're a loving grandmother and give bonds to the grandson you're crazy about on a regular basis--as often as Willie did--those bonds add up over the years. As I grew up and kept getting more and more bonds as gifts (many from her), they developed into a pretty decent sized stack.

Of course, they do eventually mature, and at a certain point, they stop maturing, so you might as well do something with them then, like reinvesting, or turning them into cash.

One day, during a conversation I was having with Willie easily forty plus years ago, I jokingly called her a cheap, crummy grandmother. With a description like that coming from such a young child, Willie thought that was hilarious, so the name stuck.

For many years, whenever a gift was exchanged, the "To" or "From" tag bore the name Cheap Crummy. Some of the envelopes my savings bond gifts came in were signed, "Love, Cheap Crummy."

Not long ago, my wife, Colleen, and I went through all the bonds I've ever received and sorted them, pulling the bonds that had matured. I took the matured bonds to the bank and cashed them in. I'd have been smart to invest the money back into something else, but not having anything really in mind for the money, and not wanting to dump it into an existing account for fear it would, in effect, lose its identity as gift money, I held the cash in an envelope in a safe at home. I figured I'd do something with it one day.

One day has finally come.

Over the past few years, I've admired the ever advancing technology of digital photography. I've never owned a digital SLR camera, mainly because of cost. I haven't been buying many things for myself lately, choosing instead to go easy on expenditures amid the current state of our business. I've watched as the technology came from behind and surpassed by miles in some cases what film cameras did in their day.

Colleen has been watching me do research on cameras recently and, knowing my hesitancy to spend the money, she suggested using the cash I got from the bonds Willie gave me all those years ago. It would probably make your grandmother very happy to know you were using that money to get something you really want, she said. Those words really hit home and stayed with me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized: she's absolutely right.

So, several decades later--longer than I would have ever guessed--I am getting one final gift from Wilma. A new Nikon digital SLR camera and telephoto lens, with plenty of bells and whistles, arrive tomorrow. From the research I've done, I have no doubt I'll get some great use out of it and will probably enjoy it tremendously. It's a purchase for both pleasure and need for me, but I really think of it as something else. It's a tribute to Willie. I have to think she would be smiling to know what she made possible, twenty years after leaving us.

From a childhood of wonderful memories she made possible for me, including staying with her in her small Plainview, Texas home one summer and travelling with her, I have come, yet again, to realize how special and good Cheap Crummy was to me, and how lucky I was to have her as my grandmother.

I will think of her when I use my new camera.

David

Talk about frustrating...

We've been working with a Seller who has been behind on his payments. Unfortunately, he Listed with us late in the game, so to speak, already having tried to sell on his own (unsuccessfully), and long since having received a notice of Foreclosure. But we told him we'd give it our best shot in an effort to help him avoid being Foreclosed.

We managed to get an Offer on his property and began immediately to try and obtain Short Sale approval. But if you haven't been through the process before, rest assured that it's not as easy as picking up the phone one time and getting cleared. One Agent told me recently, "Why do they call it short? It's anything but short."

Complicating this was the delay we encountered in getting verification of the Seller's income, a critical Document Lenders must have.

Around mid-day today, one day before our Seller's Foreclosure date, we received the final needed Document. We quickly submitted all the paperwork to the Lender, along with a copy of the Sales Contract (we had to wait until all the documentation was in before we could submit it). Our Seller called the Lender twice to tell them that a Contract is in hand and to ask that his Foreclosure be delayed until they at least take the time to look at the Offer.

But guess what?

The Lender (one of those really big names everyone knows) is so big and bureaucratic that just getting the paperwork actually entered into their system takes--ready for this?--seven to ten days after they receive it. The Lender, we were told, outsources their incoming paperwork flow to another company to process.

So, you could FAX everything in as needed on, say, the first of the month (e-mail? no way...has to be FAXed), and if you call about it eight or nine days later, there's a good chance the Lender will tell you that they have no record of it. That's what the Seller we're working with was told when he called today to make his final plea. Without a Contract, there is absolutely nothing we can do for you, the Lender told our Seller.

How's that for efficient?

Unless something totally unforseen happens, our Seller will lose his property tomorrow, despite the fact that we procured a Buyer.

Who knows ... maybe, in another week or ten days, the Lender will run a cross a copy of the Sales Contract.

I can see it now: "Hmm. Hey Fred, look at this. Looks like a Contract to buy one of our properties. Say, didn't we already Foreclose that one? I wonder how long it's been sitting here? Oh well..."

Who wins when it ends up like this?

David

I will always be grateful for Walter Cronkite.

You'd know why I say that if you grew up in the 1960's or '70s, when television news was such a totally different industry from what it is today, and when we depended on it so much to learn about our world.

Back then, television news was real.

The most trusted man in America, as he was frequently called, held that title for a reason. Mr. Cronkite brought honesty and integrity to a profession in its infancy. It was inevitable that so many Americans would connect with his down home demeanor and sincerity.

And, unlike so much of the reporting Americans watch today, Walter Cronkite was willing to question authority.

His nearly two decades as anchor of the CBS Evening News coincided with what became a daily viewing routine for millions of families, including mine. Hurry, Mom would say, “it's almost time for Walter.”

We always made it a point to gather around the television set at 5:30 p.m. to hear Mr. Cronkite explain the events taking place at home and abroad. If you missed him, you had to wait until the next day; after all, there were no constant news cable channels, no electronic ticker tape bulletins crawling across the screen, and no Internet. Pretty much, there was just Walter and his fellow journalists, inching their way along in a new electronic medium, void of splashy motion graphics and sound effects, doing what they did best: informing.

Walter Cronkite is part of the reason I vividly remember July 20, 1969, when the black and white television set in our Texas living room brought us fuzzy images of Neil Armstrong setting foot upon the moon. We watched in suspense, while Mr. Cronkite, through his compelling storytelling, helped us realize the magnitude of what we were witnessing. There are so many other memories I have of seeing Mr. Cronkite bringing us news that I can't count them all. When someone is in your living room every day, well, he's family.

Mr. Cronkite didn't know it, but he helped inspire a young Texas kid to pursue a career in the news business. Prior to getting into real estate, I spent more than 30 years in broadcast journalism, including working in television news in Texas and, later, Alabama. My love of journalism started around age seven, and included recording make believe newscasts on our old reel-to-reel tape recorder, as well as creating newspapers while seated at Dad's IBM electric typewriter.

My mother once said to me that she expected me to one day sit in Mr. Cronkite's anchor chair. That wasn't meant to be, but a wonderful thing happened, anyway: I got to grow up in the Cronkite era.

From all the TV news I watched in the days of the Cronkite era, I could tell you the names of many on-air correspondents, as they were known. Eric Sevareid and Howard K. Smith were familiar; I traveled across America, On The Road, with Charles Kuralt, a regular feature on the CBS Evening News. There was John Chancellor. Dan Rather. Chet Huntley. David Brinkley. Daniel Schorr. Hughes Rudd. Roy Neal. And so many more. I followed local news on both television and radio, as closely, too.

The fire really got lit after a trip to New York City when Dad took a budding young journalist of around age ten to 51 W. 52nd St to see the CBS Morning and Evening newscasts produced live. Mr. Cronkite was off that day, but I still got to see where the giants of the industry worked! My eyes were wide open when Mr. Rudd welcomed us into his small office for a visit following the morning newscast. The thrill of getting to watch the news from the main Control Room was the experience of a lifetime (which reminds me … I need to tell my Dad, again, how cool it was of him to arrange that).

The Cronkite thrill didn't stop after childhood. It came back for me as recently as September 9, 2006. While watching the launch of the Shuttle Atlantis from the Kennedy Space Center, I saw the media stands where Mr. Cronkite once sat and, with NASA astronauts adding commentary, brought us the Apollo launches that I and millions of others watched live.

Many will probably say that Mr. Cronkite's passing represents the end of an era for television news. But the era, I think, was ending earlier, while he was alive, as broadcast ownership and managements began to change, not once, but repeatedly, and as cable and other technology started creating new challenges for the industry. The broadcast news profession was starting to undergo a profound change, and its long-held stability was the first casualty.

When broadcasters started losing more and more audience in the 1980s, consultants advised them to go younger and sexier to get viewers back. By then, the Cronkite look was dinosaur era. “Make it sizzle and splash,” broadcasters were told. Entertainment started nudging its nose alongside news content.

Infotainment was in.

I wish the broadcasters had instead gone to Mr. Cronkite and asked, “What would you do to keep our audience?” My bet is that he would have told them the answer in a few simple words: “Keep doing what you do best.”

Mr. Cronkite wasn't slick or flashy. He never tried to be. It wasn't his character, and it wasn't why he was on the air. “That my delivery is straight, even dull at times, is probably a valid criticism. But I built my reputation on honest, straightforward reporting. To do anything else would be phony," he said.

I missed out on the Edward R. Murrow era. But I call the Cronkite generation home. And I feel for people who missed it, and who instead rely on today's broadcast news diet, one I think of as the rough equivalent of lots of empty calories with virtually no nutrition. It caused me to go through a big change, turning from someone who lived and breathed the news business 24 hours a day to someone who pretty much stopped watching years ago.

What an amazing transition the industry has gone through in the years since Mr. Cronkite retired. The Cronkite era was all about “get it right.” Today's era is “get it first,” regardless of other considerations. So, I'm old fashioned? Guilty.

Technology changed everything, including the definition of news.

In the Cronkite era, covering news meant sending a crew to some remote part of the world where they shot film. The film would typically then have to be flown somewhere else to be developed (often, back to New York). Today, anyone with an iPhone can shoot video and upload it to the Internet for the world to see in a matter of seconds.

In the days of Mr. Cronkite, breaking news meant that you stopped whatever it was you were doing, sat down, and watched what he had to say. You didn't even have to ask if something big had happened. Today, breaking news means newly discovered footage of Michael Jackson's hair on fire.

After the Cronkite era, I started feeling less and less payoff for the time spent watching. I'd be hard pressed to tell you who's on any of the channels today. You can't go back, but I secretly wished for the days when faces with wrinkles and few showmanship skills delivered factual, informative accounts of events that really affect us. I longed for the people who wanted to be on the air, not to be stars or famous, but to communicate information that mattered to us. That's what attracted me to the business.

Distracting graphics, messages that pollute the screen, swish sound effects, slick coiffures and people talking at the same time instead of listening? No thanks. What happened to the good story telling and investigative reporting where tough questions were asked? Nowadays, you have to really hunt to find those.

I had many wonderful experiences during my years in broadcasting and still respect the difficult and often dangerous job journalists have. But the changes I saw coming in the administrative offices and on the air told me it was time to move on.

The end of the Cronkite era is as close as your television set. Not many years back, during the 9 p.m. news on one of the network affiliates in my market, the long time anchor said, “We have some breaking news to tell you about tonight.” The picture switched to video, live from the scene, showing a parked fire department rescue truck that had been involved in a fender bender while responding to an emergency call. Nobody hurt; just a torn up front bumper. If I had been the anchor reading that, I would have been embarrassed.

When I was a television news reporter in the 1990's, a supervisor at our daily editorial meeting (where we decided what stories to cover) turned down my suggestion of doing a report about the local area's economy. “That's a newspaper story,” she said.

I don't think editorial decisions like these would have been likely in the Cronkite era.

A friend and former television news anchor commented recently on the changes the industry has undergone. “Journalism isn't an honest profession, anymore,” he said.

The question more and more people ask today about the news media's coverage of many subjects is usually the same: What are they not telling us? Is the coverage balanced? Are we hearing all the sides? So much reporting has become so superficial and often one-sided (a concern Mr. Cronkite himself spoke about) that our skepticism of the media grows more all the time, while our confidence in it drops.

Most kids had baseball players or cowboys as their heroes. Mine was Mr. Cronkite (though Sky King, with his ultra cool twin engine Cessna, and Commander Scott McCloud with his spaceship Starduster from the science fiction cartoon Space Angel, were pretty close behind).

I wish I had written Mr. Cronkite a letter. I could have told him how much I appreciated the job he did. I could have told him how much I wish the electronic media could be trusted and relied upon again, more like it was when he and the associates of his day were on the air.

Most of all, I would just tell him, “Thank you.”

The moist, delicious turkey with all the trimmings, I must admit, are temptations in and of themselves. But it's not about the food. Yesterday reminds me of the real reasons.

My daily morning walk with Fisbo, our six pound poodle, brought the first reminder. We are sometimes joined in our walk by a neighbor and her dog who live one street over from us. Seeing each other, we walked together and began catching up on the latest neighborhood news.

That's when she informed me that her husband, who had worked in sales for a local industrial business, had lost his job two weeks ago. After thirteen years with the company, one of the telltale signs of what was only days ahead came at the gas pumps out of town when he was unable to charge a fill-up using his company-issued gas card. Sorry, the boss told him, business is so bad that we just can't keep you on board any more. Good luck!

So, the two of them--in their sixties, never having been late on a payment and now having to start over--are trying to figure out how to cope. I tried to offer words of encouragement. It may not be obvious now, I said to her, but maybe this is opening a new door of opportunity for both of you. She agreed. And I sure want to think so.

Reminder number two is the phone call I get shortly after finishing our walk, informing me that Charles, a friend for the past 25 years or so, had lost his battle with cancer about an hour before my neighborhood walk. His family had kept a low profile on his struggle, and I had learned of his illness only three days earlier. We only saw each other once or twice a year, but we always spoke and caught up on the latest news when our paths crossed. Our circuit of mutual friends finds Charles' death hard to believe, given the healthy lifestyle he tried to lead, and the fact that he was only in his 50's. His son, brother and sister, whom most of us know, as well, are making final arrangements as I write this.

Reminder number three is the call from a couple Colleen and I have been friends with for many years. The wife needs advice on how to help her father, who has been struggling financially, and who found a Foreclosure letter in his mailbox over the weekend. They, too, need our help. We plan to be there for them, too.

This was all yesterday. One tiny slice of life in one community.

What's the lesson for me?

It's yet another reminder of the struggles people all around us face every single day. It's a reminder, as well, about why I need to be grateful for what I have, instead of moaning about what I wish for. I could fill single spaced, typed pages, front and back, with reasons to be thankful. Can you?

Sure, I get stressed at times. The driver who cuts in front of you on the interstate, the associate who doesn't call back, the no-show buyer and a dozen other things can be enough to make your blood boil sometimes. When those things happen, it's amazing what taking a deep breath and thinking about what's really important can do for you.

It changes my perspective every time.

Life's daily irritations aren't struggles. Not when I see what so many people have to deal with. I plan to keep this in mind.

Tomorrow is a new day.

David

Okay, so we're getting another New Listing ready this afternoon in preparation for turning it loose on the MLS. This involves staging and taking pictures, among other things. Colleen and I are walking around inside the home, which is vacant ... well, it was supposed to be vacant.

Upon entering the Master Suite, I look across the empty room and see a telephone on the floor, next to what looks like a piece of coaxial cable coming out of the wall just above the carpet. They have either satellite or cable TV, I figure. That is coaxial cable, isn't it? Hmm, I don't see what looks like the standard connector on one end. I walk over to take a closer look. Here's who I meet:

Hmm, what would be the appropriate entry in Agent Notes: Seller agrees to include with any reasonable offer?

David