Ralf Kramden, One Of Us

Another Lost Episode and Decade of The Honeymooners

(Ralf Kramden enters his Brooklyn apartment. His wife Alice is ready to put out supper.)

Ralf
Hi Honey. Dinner sure smells great but before we eat there’s something I want to run past you.

Alice
More important than your supper? Well, lets hear it, Ralf.

Ralf
Alice, I’ve been thinking about this all day ever since I talked to McGinty down at the depot. We’ve got to buy this apartment.

Alice
Buy it? Ralf we struggle to make rent some months.

Ralf
Alice, the only reason we have trouble paying rent is because we pay rent. We’re just throwing money down the drain. We could be owners, Alice. There are only two kinds of people in the world, renters and owners. I’ve been a renter all my life. I want to be an owner.

Alice
We’d be the owners of a mortgage, Ralf. This place wouldn’t be ours for twenty or thirty years.

Ralf
That’s the beauty of it, Alice. This place will pay for itself. By the time we sign the papers and make a few payments this place will already be worth more than we paid for it. All we have to do is refinance and pay the original mortgage off with our profit.

Alice
What if the real estate market goes down, Ralf? Did you ever think about that?

Ralf
Real Estate doesn’t go down, Alice. Maybe a couple of times for a year or two in the past but there’s seven billion people in the world now and they all need a roof over their head. God isn’t making any more land and Global Warming is shaving off what little we had to begin with. I’m telling you real estate is going up. Pow, zoom, right to the Moon.

Alice
Just like the Internet was going to make millionaires out of everyone who invested in it ten years ago?

Ralf
This is totally different, Alice. I was right about the Internet. It’s bigger than ever. We just didn’t make any money on it, that’s all.

Alice
We lost money on it. Half of our lifesavings to be exact. And that’s only because I refused to let you invest my half.

Ralf
This is totally different, Alice. Big as it is, the Internet is still just air. I’m talking about this apartment. You’re not going to tell me this isn’t real.

Alice
The apartment is real, Ralf. No argument there. Its real estate that isn’t real. They’re asking for a quarter of a million dollars for this place.

Ralf
That includes the bathroom.

Alice
And we’re going to have to pay a maintenance fee every month almost as high as the rent we pay now along with the mortgage payments. Ralf, nobody in his right mind would loan us the money and where would we get the down payment?

Ralf
We’re already approved.

Alice
What do you mean we’re already approved?

Ralf
I called a couple of the mortgage lenders who have advertisements on the bus, spoke to each of them for a couple of minutes and they all approved.

Alice
Did you tell them how much you make?

Ralf
They didn’t ask. They just looked up our credit score and approved. Alice, we can sign the papers tomorrow and in a couple of weeks this place is ours.

Alice
Ralf, unless we have the money to buy this place outright signing papers won’t mean we own this place. It will mean this place owns us.

Ralf
Real estate has to keep going up, Alice. The bus drivers union has most our pension money tied up in it.

Alice
So we’re already overexposed with the real estate market and you want to gambol our personal savings on it too?

Ralf
Double or nothing, it’s the only way to get ahead. You don’t get anywhere in this life without taking a chance.

Alice
How about slowly adding to our saving account at the bank?

Ralf
Nobody’s more up to their neck in real estate than the banks. If it goes down the banks go down. But even then my union would just force the company to raise the fares. That’s the American way. You take a chance and if you screw up you find a way to make the other guy pay.

Don Arrup
Satire1

*This satire marks the first anniversary of Satire1 on the web. Thank you readers.