YOU THOUGHT INTEREST RATES WERE HIGH THEN!

        I was reminiscing about the good-old-days with a close friend that still lives in Des Moines. He had mentioned that a group of guys that we both socialized with still meet on ocassion. One that he mentioned was Dean Neese who was one of the original co-founders of Taco John's.

     When I was selling real estate back then I had sold Dean a Townhome just a couple of doors down from my place in a project called West Park in West Des Moines. This would have been in the early 1980's when the farm crisis began and the country wide recession. Ronald Reagan hadn't been President too long and interest rates were on the drastic rise due to extreme inflation in the late 1970's.

      I distinctly remember that when Dean actually bought the place and by the time the transaction was completed due to his slowness in getting various documents completed and turned in, the mortgage interest rates had gone up from 11-12% range to around 15 percent and in some cases to 16%. He didn't seem to mind at the time as I think he just paid off the mortgage later on when he sold out from Taco John's. That was high!