Hot steaming mess...
A few weeks back, a realtor who has lived and worked in Estes Park for over 20 years (dumb as a loose plop of sidewalk shit, but I didn't know that at the time) swore that a neighborhood south of town had an old restriction "recorded right on the original plat" that lost her a sale, because the language on the plat prevented people of a certain religion from buying property in that neighborhood, and they were of that religion, and they had asked her about the history of the place for some reason, and she, being a diligent realtor, had gone down to the county and pulled up the plat, not knowing that it contained this offensive language.
So me, being gullible (or sensitive to suggestion, as are the best subjects for hypnotists, since I had already found similarly-worded documents from other Estes Park neighborhoods), plus unsure why someone would make up such a convincing story, replete with all these details, as if it had just played out yesterday, not 20 years ago, marched down to the neighborhood and started knocking on doors, finding out if they had a homeowners' association, who the president of the homeowners' association was, and where she lived. I had the power of passionate conviction and righteous indignation on my side, and had no fear of knocking on doors unannounced, or chasing people down in the street to gain the information I sought.
Everyone in the neighborhood was incredibly friendly, even when I provided the bad news that this horribly anti-Semitic covenant was recorded "right on their original plat", and when I found the homeowner's association president, interrupting her dinner besides, she couldn't have been more gracious, as I assured her this was offensive restriction was recorded "right on their original plat", and I would gladly return with the evidence after I went to the clerk and recorder's office the following day, if she was having any hesitation accepting the absolute incontrovertible truth of what I said.
Well, you know how this story ends. I went down to the clerk and recorder's office the following day and found the original plat, and the plat for the addition to this neighborhood. When I saw that the original plat was recorded in 1965, I was a bit skeptical of finding much of anything of an anti-Semitic nature in the small print on the plat, because the developer would have essentially been recording something already legally unenforceable at the time of filing.
Indeed, there was no language or any kind restricting ownership by race or religion on the original 1965 plat, or on the plat for the addition to the neighborhood, filed for record in 1969. This hardly detered me from still strongly believing it was recorded somewhere, because I had the realtor's word, and the precise detail about where, meaning on what particular document, this offensive language was recorded may have faded from memory after 20 years, but certainly not the neighborhood that was keeping the Jews out, and certainly not the specific offensive restriction that had lost the realtor a sale. My guess is, not being a realtor but just encountering these sad-luck tales in other aspects of life, lost sales due to something out of one's control, indeed, where the seller goes the extra mile and ends up losing the sale because of that, are hard to forget.
Both plats did indicate that a list of covenants for the neighborhood had been filed contemporaneously with the clerk and recorder, so it was just a matter of finding these covenants, and finding the anti-Semitic language in these covenants, and my reputation was still safe, my indignation still righteous.
As with anything that should be easy to locate at the Larimer County clerk and recorder's office, finding these covenants, either for the original parcel or the addition to the neighborhood, proved exceedingly difficult. The head of the department, when informed that I couldn't find anything by electronic search, sent me off on a wild goose chase looking through every real-estate document that had been recorded by the clerk and recorder in 1965. Even by narrowing it down to particular probable months or days within these months, this effort proved fruitless. There were still hundreds of documents (you would be surprised how busy the clerk and recorder's office is recording and filing documents for a county the size of Larimer County, even in 1965 - as a populace, we are document-generating machines) filed each week in August 1965, and since I was looking at scanned versions, they had to be tediously opened, examined, and closed electronically, page by page.
After an hour of this, I came across a gap of 12 pages between recorded documents, an indication that pages may have been skipped in scanning. The first page before the gap was the first page of someone's last will and testament that obviously continued into the unscanned gap, but I wasn't sure if it continued through all 12 pages, and at least it gave me a legitimate reason to ask for what this 12-page gap was. I was running out of time, though, and knew how hard it was for the clerks at the desk to search through original material, so I just left it as a request and promised to return later in the week.
(To be continued)
So me, being gullible (or sensitive to suggestion, as are the best subjects for hypnotists, since I had already found similarly-worded documents from other Estes Park neighborhoods), plus unsure why someone would make up such a convincing story, replete with all these details, as if it had just played out yesterday, not 20 years ago, marched down to the neighborhood and started knocking on doors, finding out if they had a homeowners' association, who the president of the homeowners' association was, and where she lived. I had the power of passionate conviction and righteous indignation on my side, and had no fear of knocking on doors unannounced, or chasing people down in the street to gain the information I sought.
Everyone in the neighborhood was incredibly friendly, even when I provided the bad news that this horribly anti-Semitic covenant was recorded "right on their original plat", and when I found the homeowner's association president, interrupting her dinner besides, she couldn't have been more gracious, as I assured her this was offensive restriction was recorded "right on their original plat", and I would gladly return with the evidence after I went to the clerk and recorder's office the following day, if she was having any hesitation accepting the absolute incontrovertible truth of what I said.
Well, you know how this story ends. I went down to the clerk and recorder's office the following day and found the original plat, and the plat for the addition to this neighborhood. When I saw that the original plat was recorded in 1965, I was a bit skeptical of finding much of anything of an anti-Semitic nature in the small print on the plat, because the developer would have essentially been recording something already legally unenforceable at the time of filing.
Indeed, there was no language or any kind restricting ownership by race or religion on the original 1965 plat, or on the plat for the addition to the neighborhood, filed for record in 1969. This hardly detered me from still strongly believing it was recorded somewhere, because I had the realtor's word, and the precise detail about where, meaning on what particular document, this offensive language was recorded may have faded from memory after 20 years, but certainly not the neighborhood that was keeping the Jews out, and certainly not the specific offensive restriction that had lost the realtor a sale. My guess is, not being a realtor but just encountering these sad-luck tales in other aspects of life, lost sales due to something out of one's control, indeed, where the seller goes the extra mile and ends up losing the sale because of that, are hard to forget.
Both plats did indicate that a list of covenants for the neighborhood had been filed contemporaneously with the clerk and recorder, so it was just a matter of finding these covenants, and finding the anti-Semitic language in these covenants, and my reputation was still safe, my indignation still righteous.
As with anything that should be easy to locate at the Larimer County clerk and recorder's office, finding these covenants, either for the original parcel or the addition to the neighborhood, proved exceedingly difficult. The head of the department, when informed that I couldn't find anything by electronic search, sent me off on a wild goose chase looking through every real-estate document that had been recorded by the clerk and recorder in 1965. Even by narrowing it down to particular probable months or days within these months, this effort proved fruitless. There were still hundreds of documents (you would be surprised how busy the clerk and recorder's office is recording and filing documents for a county the size of Larimer County, even in 1965 - as a populace, we are document-generating machines) filed each week in August 1965, and since I was looking at scanned versions, they had to be tediously opened, examined, and closed electronically, page by page.
After an hour of this, I came across a gap of 12 pages between recorded documents, an indication that pages may have been skipped in scanning. The first page before the gap was the first page of someone's last will and testament that obviously continued into the unscanned gap, but I wasn't sure if it continued through all 12 pages, and at least it gave me a legitimate reason to ask for what this 12-page gap was. I was running out of time, though, and knew how hard it was for the clerks at the desk to search through original material, so I just left it as a request and promised to return later in the week.
(To be continued)
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