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When he meets strangers and they ask what he does, he merely says he is in the marine industry. He has repossessed the boats of friends and one relative, a cousin. “Somebody’s got to do it,” he said. “Might as well be me.”
Toy Box was rocketing up Lake St. Clair when Mr. Henderson’s cellphone rang. It was the marina he had just left, saying the owner had shown up looking for his boat. He was now driving up to Harrison Marine.
The possibility of violence shadows every repo man. “Sometimes people have a bit of an attitude,” Mr. Henderson said. He was seizing a pontoon boat from a yard in northern Michigan when a woman came out pointing a hunting rifle. Another time, an off-duty police officer pulled a gun, perhaps confusing the repo man with a thief.
But when he steered Toy Box up to his dock, no fisticuffs ensued. Robert Dahmen, a lanky 49-year-old, was peaceful, even apologetic. He wanted to salvage whatever he could off the boat, and offered in return to detail its history to any possible buyers. Mr. Henderson was polite but distant. Hard-luck stories have ceased to interest him.
Some people lose their house or their boat to abrupt setbacks: illness, job loss, divorce. Mr. Dahmen, who works as a technology manager for a car manufacturer, belongs to a second, probably larger group: he simply spent beyond his means. He is one of the millions of reasons the consumer-powered American economy did so well for most of this decade, and one of the reasons its prospects look so bleak now.
“There’s a certain sense of failure about all this, to tell you the truth,” Mr. Dahmen said. “There really is.”
He originally bought a smaller, more affordable boat, but a salesman talked him into an upgrade. “Oh yeah, I said, that would be cool.” And it was: There were many pleasant cruises during the brief Michigan summers.
The merriment came at a price, though. Toy Box cost $175,000. With the trade-in and a down payment, Mr. Dahmen ended up with a $125,000 loan. “You pay the interest up front,” he observed, “and the principal never goes down.” After seven years he still owed $111,000, about twice what the boat is worth. Meanwhile, he lost his condominium when his mortgage readjusted and those payments went up. His 401(k) is down to $9,000.
“I oversaturated myself with long-term debt,” he said. “It was a risk, a calculated risk. I obviously lost.” He is declaring bankruptcy.
As soon as the Harrison Marine crew winched Toy Box out of the water, Mr. Dahmen boarded for the last time. He removed a wooden wine rack, life preservers, a case of Absopure water, paper plates, swizzle sticks and yachting shoes. His S.U.V. was soon full.
From now on, Mr. Dahmen said, the consumer economy would have to get by without him. “I have no intention of ever buying anything, ever,” he said. “I don’t think I could if I wanted to.”
Mr. Dahmen gave Toy Box a hug. “O.K., I’m gonna go cry now,” he said. He drove away without looking back. Mr. Henderson left, too. His house is about 15 miles away, inland. He used to live on the water, but it reminded him too much of work.
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