The House: An Allegory

Jacob was born in a comfortable upper middle class neighborhood, the son of a successful mechanical engineer and a stay at home mom. While he would never have thought himself rich, Jacob enjoyed the privileges of affluence.


Jacob came to love the house of his youth. It was not the largest house around, or the nicest, but it was home.  Jacob had his own room with a big loft bed. Jacob's father had a big den he would retire to when he had visitors. They would come out hours later laughing heartily and smelling of cigar smoke. Jacob dreamed of the day he would join his father and the other men there.

Out in the back his mother planted flower beds with tulips for the spring and lilies for the summer. His dad, the engineer built Jacob a tree-house on the big tree in the back yard. It was the best tree-house anyone in the neighborhood had ever seen. Jacob loved sleeping out there on warm summer nights.

Young Jacob was a model student. He excelled at mathematics, and dreamed of being an engineer like his father.  He had lots of friends and was decent at sports for a math wiz.  He gained a reputation as a wrestler. Jacob was happy.

One night at age sixteen, Jacob's life of comfort ended.  The trucker didn't even see Jacob's dad until his car was careening off the bridge. The paramedics said he was probably dead before he hit the water.  In the aftermath, Jacob and his mother were shocked to learn that his father had been secretly harboring a gambling addiction. He had gambled away most of their savings. Six months before he died, Jacob's father had cashed in his life insurance policy to pay off some gambling debts. Jacob and his mother were left with nothing. They had to sell the house of his youth and move into a small apartment. Jacob had to go to a new school where he had no any friends.  He missed his father. He missed wrestling.  He missed the house.

Jacob graduated high school, but with no money for college, Jacob took a job working construction. He spent long hours laying concrete block in the hot sun. He continued to live with his mother and helped pay rent on their meager apartment.

A few days after Jacob turned 21, he received a letter in the mail from an attorney he had never heard of. Evidently, there was some unresolved matter from his father's will. Jacob waited a full week before he darkened the door of the law offices of  Whitby, Whitby and Morse.  When he told the secretary his name, she gave him a very startled look and immediately ushered him back to an empty meeting room.  A few minutes later a kind-looking old man entered the room.

"Arthur Whitby," the man extended his hand. "I was a friend of your father's. You probably don't remember, but I saw you at the funeral."

Jacob said nothing.

"You know your father was a gambler. He just couldn't pass up a good bet."

"Yes, I know." Jacob replied a little harsher than he had intended. "He lost everything we owned. We have nothing thanks to him."

"Well, he didn't always lose.  About eight years ago he came into my office. He had placed a risky bet on a horse, but it paid off. At ten to one odds, he had made over $200,000 in one day. He knew his weakness, his likelihood to gamble all his winnings away, so he came to me and had me set up a trust, for you. According to the terms of the trust, he could not legally touch the money, and it would transfer to you automatically at age 21.

Jacob was dumbfounded. "So I have $200,000 waiting for me in a trust?"

"Not exactly. You see, your father was still a gambler at heart, and this was his last chance to play the odds on the money.  He invested it in some up-and-coming tech stocks. I told him it was foolish, but that was the only way he would part with the money. It turns out, those stocks did well. In fact, the value has more than tripled in eight years. I can write you a check today for $680,000 dollars."

Jacob quit his construction job the next day. He enrolled in the engineering program at a local university for the next fall.  Then he looked up the current owner of his old house. He still loved that house. Jacob paid almost double what it had been sold for, but he moved in two weeks later.

 Jacob graduated from engineering school at the top of his class and was immediately hired by the same firm his father had worked for. He was successful and was soon married. A couple of years later, he had a son of his own.  He called him Jude.

But Jacob's life was not all rosy after that. Jacob not only inherited his math skills from his father, he also inherited his proclivity toward gambling. Like his father, Jacob tried to keep his addiction hidden, but it soon overwhelmed him. In spite of a very good paying job, Jacob was shuffling bills each month, paying off the oldest of them. He put a mortgage against his house to pay off the gambling debts.

When Jude was six years old, the bank foreclosed on the family's house. His parents got divorced soon after and Jude grew up with his mother. Jacob never kept a steady job after that. He moved from place to place, sometimes it was a friend's couch. Jacob finally took his own life when Jude was 14.

Twenty minutes away from the house Jacob grew up in, Arnie grew up in a small house with his father, a factory worker. His mother had left them when he was four years old. Arnie's house was always hot in the summer. His father could not afford to put in air-conditioning. There were no flowers in the yard, not even much grass, as the soil was contaminated.  When the wind picked up in the summer, it blew clouds of dust from the yard into Arnie's open windows.

Arnie never had a lot of things, but Arnie had learned the value of hard work early.  He operated a successful lemonade stand when he was nine.  His natural skills at business served him well, and by the age of 19 he was managing a restaurant. Two years later, Arnie went into business for himself. He owned and operated his own restaurant. It was small, but it was his.

A few years after that, Arnie, who was now married with a new baby, got a call from his old friend Greg. Greg worked for the bank.

"Hey, Arnie, I've got a deal for you."

Arnie had discovered long ago to take everything Greg said with a grain of salt. "I'm listening."

"You need a house don't you."

"Well everyone needs a house, but not everyone can afford one."

"I got one you can afford," Greg assured him.

"I'm trying to save up for something nice.  I've got a baby now."

"This is quality, " Greg explained. "A nice three bedroom. Big kitchen. Beautiful little yard. Nice neighborhood too. Great schools. It even has a man-cave."

"How could I afford something like that?" Arnie asked.

"It's a foreclosure. The owner couldn't make payments, so the bank owns the house. We need to get rid of it fast, so it'l go for half the market value. Now, I took the liberty to run your  credit. We can give you the loan for it.  You just need the down payment. You been saving anything from that little diner of yours?

Arnie couldn't believe his luck. He had been saving a little back each month from the restaurant. He went in to the bank the very next day.  A couple weeks later, Arnie  moved his wife and baby into Jacob's old house.

Arnie and his wife went on to have several children, filling the house with joy once again. He repaired the old tree-house for his boys. They loved sleeping out there on warm summer nights.

In the meantime, Arnie's restaurant grew, and he hired several employees to help out at the store.  One of those employees was a young man named Jude.  Arnie took a liking to Jude from the start. The troubled boy's story reminded him a little of his own.

Jude was now 17 years old. His father was dead. He lived with his mother and her motorcycle driving boyfriend named Dutch. Dutch was a cruel man who physically and verbally abused Jude on a near daily basis. One day when Jude came to work with a particularly rough looking black eye, Arnie's compassion got the best of him. He offered to let Jude come stay with him. And so Jude returned to the house of his childhood once again.

Arnie's own children were not particularly happy about having Jude coming to stay with them. Jude was somewhat of a bully at their school. The abused becomes the abuser.  Jude was shrewd, and, through deals, bribes, and threats, had soon staked out his place in Arnie's household. Arnie's children tried to leave him alone as best they could.

One day Jude returned to his mother's house to pick up the last of his things to move to Arnie's house. Inside, he found some old bank documents relating to the house, the house he was now living in with Arnie's family. As Jude looked over the documents carefully, he discovered several discrepancies in the foreclosure proceedings that had ultimately ejected his family from that house so many years before. If Jude was right, the house should never have been foreclosed. It should never have been taken from him and his family.  It was his house.

What followed was a messy legal battle that would nearly bankrupt both sides. Jude insisted that he was not trying to take anything from Arnie and his family, that he was just trying to get what the bank had taken from him. Arnie couldn't believe that this boy that he had welcomed into his own house was now trying to take it out from under him.

After a lengthy court review, the house was awarded to Jude. Arnie appealed the decision. In the end, the fairest verdict might have been for them to split the house, to sell it and divide the profits between the two, but neither would agree to this. In desperation, Arnie was forced to sell his restaurant to pay all the legal fees. Still, there was no resolution in sight. After four long years of struggle, Arnie finally gave up his claim to the house and moved out. He found a job in another city and took his family to start a new life there. Jude in his shrewdness was able to get a loan to buy the restaurant that had once employed him.

By this time, Paul, Arnie's oldest son was finishing up his last semester of high school. He would soon begin premed classes at the local university. He could not afford to move with his family. Jude made a contract for Paul allowing him to stay in the house in exchange for 20 hours of work in the restaurant. Paul did not trust Jude, but felt he had no other choice. Of course, Paul has had many other expenses and has worked more than 40 hours a week to get by. His studies have suffered, and he is now eight years into his medical program with at least two more years to go. In spite of all his work, Paul has built up a small debt to Jude that he will have to pay off even after he graduates college.

To this day, Paul continues to live in the basement of Jude's house.  Although it was once his family home, he now has no share in it. He works long hours for Jude so he can continue to subside in a corner of the house that was once his home. Jude resents Paul's presence there, but is unable to kick him out because of the contract they had both signed. Meanwhile, Paul is looking over the court documents from the case that deprived his family of their house. He has noticed a few discrepancies himself.