Angry Indiana HOA Head is Hilarious

Maybe I'm mean, but sometimes people who are so angry they are foaming at the mouth are pathetically funny.

The Stonecreek neighborhood in Indiana. Photo by
Molly Bartels, Evansvill Currier & Press

I thought of this when I came across a perfectly reasonable and well written article in the Evansville (Indiana) Currier & Press about how some homeowners' association leaders can turn autocratic and petty.

The article, written by reporter Thomas Langhorne, partly focused on a guy named Stephen Hess, president of the Stonecreek Arbors Subdivision Homeowners' Association, a housing development in Indiana.

Hess filed a bunch of liens on homeowners he said did not pay their association dues, Langhorne reports. Some people in the neighborhood were quoted in the Currier & Press article as saying Hess is a bit too authoritarian and mean.

Hess did not help his case in his dealings with the newspaper.  He sent the Currier & Press a stern message saying he would sue the reporter and the paper if they so much as mentioned Hess's name or the name of the subdivision.

Um, right.  I can't speak for the Currier & Press, but a person demanding his name not be mentioned at all in an article is just begging the reporter to say the name over and over again.  For the record, anybody can sue, but litigation like this would be laughed out of court in an instant.

Hess also followed up with a lengthy, very ranty phone call that the newspaper gleefully posted on its web site.

The recording is a work of art as a voice that purported belongs to Hess yells about his lawsuit and demands to speak to the reporter's boss. Each time the reporter starts to politely offer to transfer the call to his editor, the angry man blasts off again on his rant, preventing said phone transfer. It really is hilarious.

Open this link, scroll  to the bottom and listen to the very funny "conversation." And you thought YOU had a bad day!