They were two old men sitting on a porch, mad at the world. It wasn’t, they said, supposed to happen this way.
Their story is a now-familiar one: The lousy economy takes another business under. Income disappears, followed by a foreclosure notice and the requisite moving truck in the driveway.
The bank, of course, promised Nathaniel Bostwick it would work with him on payments. It never did.
And then, two weeks ago, a man knocked on his door. The place had been sold at auction. He had until the 30th to get out.
Sitting on the porch with him was his friend and former business partner, Pete Brotz. They had just watched a large blue Dumpster get dropped at the curb. They did everything but spit at it.
Nat is 67. He has lived in the house on Adams Street just off the Seventh Avenue parkway since his parents first rented it when he was 11.
He took in Pete about 10 years ago. His wife and his parents, who’d bought the house with him in 1969, had died. He and Pete, 73 years old now, were going into the remodeling and construction business together.
They made good money. And then the housing bubble burst on them.
The house had been refinanced over the years so there were still mortgage payments. They started to be missed.
I had been chatting with the men for days, a witness at their invitation to what happens when two lives suddenly fall apart.
They were frenzied. They were frightened.
Nat found for himself a subsidized one-bedroom place in a hotel by the Capitol. At the end, though, he couldn’t turn his back on Pete and Gussie, their 6-year-old German shepherd mix. He kept looking.
That morning, before the Dumpster arrived, they were finally approved for a two-bedroom duplex at East 25th Avenue and Cherry Street. Gussie was approved too.
They began the process of sorting through a house stuffed with what you would expect a man to collect over 56 years of living in one place.
“We’ll leave a lot of it,” Nat said. “Just take the valuable stuff.”
He never figured his life would turn out this way. College-educated and speaking several languages, he worked all over the world in good-paying jobs.
“I am (angry) mostly at the banks,” he said. “I begged them to work with me. I am (angry) at the world in general — how any country can allow this to happen to a good person . . .”
They will flip a coin to decide whose car gets sold. They both live on Social Security and cannot afford two.
“We’re going to apply for food stamps,” Pete says.
“We know of some food banks,” Nat says, “and of services for old folks like us.”
He thinks awhile on this.
“No, never thought it would ever come to this.”
He’ll get a moving truck to come in the morning, Nat Bostwick said. Fifty-six years, he mutters, rubbing the back of his neck.
There is just one thing, he declares, that he really must take.
He’d called the telephone company that morning, he explained. He recites his number, complete with the old prefix, the one his parents were assigned when he was a boy.
“They told me they would try to let me keep it,” Nat Bostwick said. “They told me I was a very good customer. And I’m paid up too.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
