Is this the new normal --  a mom with 7-week-old twins waiting tables for travelers at a late-night diner?

I interviewed dozens of people during my just completed cross-country journey, but my idle late-night chat with a waitress in southern Idaho seemed to strike the loudest chord with readers. I was at a Perkins in Idaho just before midnight; she was talking about her children to customers at another table.  When she came to plunk down my salad, I asked about her kids.

"I have an 18-month old at home," she said. "And two 7-week-old twins." Her husband works during the day, and she works at night so someone is always with the kids.

Over on my Facebook page, barbs were slung about this anonymous waitress, who seemed to draw forth every political argument of the past half-century -- about our inadequate health care and maternity leave systems; about low minimum wage standards; about a lack of economic opportunity in small towns, or large ones; about the two-income trap that forces both parents to work to survive; about birth control -- she should have used it, some said -- and about letting people sink or swim on their own personal choices. And many more.

One thing seemed undeniable, however: the waitress and her story made us angry. Or rather, she exposed our anger. 

To drive across this great country, coast to coast, is to engage its beauty, its history and its spectacular depth. Making the trip today, however, forces a traveler to confront something else: the unmistakable frustration that grows with each passing month of anemic recovery from a bad recession. The unemployed are tired of looking for work; the underemployed are tired of being insulted by their bosses; home sellers are exhausted trying to find buyers. Even people who are doing OK feel stuck, wondering when their next city park might close, if their health care co-pay is going up or when might be a better time to open a small business. 

We are tired, and we are angry.

But we are Americans, which means we don't give up. 

I was privileged during this past three weeks to meet hundreds of msnbc.com and Red Tape readers who overwhelmed me with their stories about fighting cable TV and cell phone fees, fighting school taxes, fighting to keep small towns alive -- and, yes, fighting with burger customers at midnight so their children will have a chance. The common thread is obvious.  Sometimes it can get ugly, and it's almost always uncomfortable, but America is a nation of fighters. That spirit is our greatest national resource.  That is what will pull us through this dark time.

With that in mind, here is a collection of stories about men and women I met who have taken on that fight across this great land, and how they are doing.  They may not always get the result they want -- who does? -- but just by fighting, they're already won. A few of them offer ways you can get involved in the fight.

Theresa Amato

Theresa Amato has grand dreams. She wants to put an end to confusion caused by fine print in everyday consumer contracts, sometimes called "standard form contracts." If you've ever called a company looking for a refund or a replacement and heard those dreaded words, "No, that's in the contract you signed," you should know Amato and her project, FairContracts.org.

"What have you agreed to today," is the slogan used by the new project of Citizen Works, a nonprofit.

Armed with a rotating group of legal interns, Amato invites frustrated consumers to send in every contract they sign with cell phone companies, cable companies, auto dealers, etc., so the folks at FairContracts.org can catalog them and then work to translate them into plain English. The group then works to educate consumers on the latest “tricks and traps” through its website.

The immediate goal is to make consumers aware of all the consequences of signing everyday contracts. The long-term goal is to shame companies and regulators into making the contracts more fair. 

"For several decades now, government regulators have used disclosure, and even more disclosure, as the primary tool of monitoring business activities, under a theory that if businesses tell consumers in their fine print, businesses can do as they please and consumers can read for themselves if they agree or not to the terms of any transaction, and choose to enter or walk away from the deal," said Amato, who is based in Chicago. "But unfair and deceptive policies and practices, some would say fraud and abuse, can be and are buried in the fine print. Many scholars argue that it is not rational for consumers to read the fine print, or for courts to expect them to. But courts do expect them to under a ‘duty to read’ in contract law. And there’s the rub."

Among the most common, unfair provisions, according to Amato: Terms that force consumers to surrender their rights to file lawsuits, or enter class-action lawsuits, simply because they buy a phone or a television set. 

At its core, the problem is this: Because most of these companies include the same contract language, consumers can't really "walk away," unless they plan to avoid using a cell phone or buying a car. Therefore, these aren't really contracts -- deals bargained between two equal parties -- as much as they are one-sided warning notices from companies stating what they plan to refuse to do.

Amato has firepower behind her effort; Ralph Nader is founder of the organization -- he's called the problem "contract incarceration" in the past.  But she wants help -- believe it or not, she wants your fine print.  Interns working for her project often have trouble getting copies of contracts unless they actually sign up with the companies, which often refuse to surrender copies to non-customers.  So she wants consumers to e-mail all the fine print they have to contracts@FairContracts.org. She'll get her volunteer army to sort through them and make sense out of them. 

John Davis

Devoted fee-fighter John Davis of Pittsburgh just couldn't take it anymore and ditched his $1,000-per-year pay TV bill about a year ago.  But he made good use of that now-silent satellite dish on the roof. He turned it into an over-the-air TV antenna.  Now that's making lemonade out of lemons.

It may look a bit alien, but every time Davis sees his contraption, he thinks about all the money he's saving. 

"Our mantra: Never pay subscription fees to watch commercials," Davis said.

One secret about those new, free digital over-the-air signals that are available to most Americans: the picture quality is often better than pay TV options, even if you're springing for HD. 

Davis' antenna picks up signals from 35 miles away -- about two dozen stations in all. Thanks to small amplifiers that cost only a couple of dollars, he's able to send signals across 100 feet of coaxial cable to several sets in his house.  A $12.95-per-month TiVo subscription rounds out the setup, giving him a neat on-screen programming guide and, of course, DVR functionality.

"That's really all we need," he said. 

 Axton Betz

Axton Betz, 29, was hit hard by ID Theft as a child growing up in Indiana. An impostor spent years opening up credit cards and other accounts in her name. The mess was so bad that when she first applied for a car loan, she was turned down repeatedly, had to use a dealer 100 miles from home and ultimately paid 18.99% interest. 

"It was like buying a car with a credit card," she said.

Betz has slowly restored her credit rating over the nearly 20 years that she's been dealing with the issue since it was discovered when she was 11. But she's done much more than survive. She turned the crime into a career, and is now wrapping up a PhD in Human Development and Family Studies at Iowa State University, focused on identity theft. She's a subject matter expert who's given presentations to the Federal Reserve and other financial industry groups, and she'll begin a teaching career next month at Eastern Illinois University.

Her current research involves the emotional impact and "recovery experiences" of child ID theft on victims who don't discover it until they are adults. Most, like Betz, have no chance to learn the identity of their impostor because the crime is so stale. They also can suffer from a unique sense of loss about their childhood identity, which can have impacts that range far beyond damaged credit. Betz, for example, says she doesn’t consider her “real” hometown her hometown any longer because of the ID theft.

"I'm doing this because the consequences of ID theft are not well understood. There's no real research into it," Betz said. "I'm interested in where they sought support, how they think society did or didn't help with their recovery and on their personal experiences of going through it."

She's still looking for volunteers, who will be paid $40 for sharing their stories in two one-hour chats.  Anyone who's interested can reach Betz at axton@iastate.edu.

"Ultimately, I believe this will make a difference because it will some day help influence policy, perhaps make punishments for identity theft more severe because of the consequences on victims," she said. "If it does, then my 18 years of experience would be worth it."

Jaimee Napp

Jaimee Napp sure would like to see punishments for ID theft criminals increased. She tried to do that single-handedly last week in Omaha, Neb., when she sued her impostor for damages in civil court. 

Napp, in one sense, is lucky -- she's among the few victims who knows her impostor, who was a co-worker. Napp spent the last two years working to drag the impostor to district court, and get her to pay for emotional damages inflicted by the crime. We told Napp's story last week. A skeptical judge seemed unmoved by Napp's claims of suffering. He even questioned the very definition of ID theft, but left his ruling for another day.

That ruling arrived Monday. As expected, it wasn't good news.

Napp sued for $40,000. The judge awarded her $215.20. 

The amount won't begin to cover Napp's legal expenses, which are still being tallied. (For perspective: She paid $700 just to have her therapist testify in court.)

"The theft of a person's Social Security number and other personal facts and the use of that information in attempting to secure credit ... does not rise to the level indicated for (intentional infliction of emotional distress)," the judge said in his order. "It would seem that plaintiff has not suffered from a medically diagnosable and significant emotional distress." The judge instead awarded her compenation for the credit-monitoring services.

Napp was distraught immediately after the hearing date, but expressed more resolve this week.

"The verdict is confirmation that identity theft and the (Social Security number) is worth more in the criminal world than the judicial system values it," she said.  Napp continues her work for a government agency in Washington D.C. as a victim's rights advocate, and said she's undeterred by the result. "I will always work and will continue to dedicate my life to indentity theft victims and their rights."

The Hidden Fee Tour of America II

Denver – School fees? Deficit Spending? Moms are getting MAD

Golden, Colo – When Lucky died: A grief observed, on social media

Omaha, Neb – Can ID theft victims sue for damages? Not yet, it seems

Chicago – Why is housing market stuck? This family offers one answer

Somewhere in the Midwest – Driving in a bad story? You might be doing the wrong thing

Detroit – Consumer protection dead, but hope remains, says 93-year-old advocate

Ohio – An economic shock brings the kids home

Pittsburgh – Drastic bus cuts strand consumers

Washington D.C. – Follow the fight for small-town America

Additional photos from the trip, including “The prettiest Interstate in America?

Read more and follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook.

Regan Benson was furious about the list of fees her local public high school was charging for kids to "just walk in the front door." She was even angrier about where the money was going.

"It's crazy — $18 for a basic English class; $38 for honors English; $150 for each sport; a $60 graduation fee," she said, holding a paper she called the "fee sheet" from her school district. It had nearly 100 items on it and looked every bit like a small-print contract you might get from a credit card company. "I wouldn't mind if I knew the fees were going for what it says here, but I don't believe that."

Benson said she wasn't quite sure how to find out where the money was going and, more important, how to make a stink about it.

Enter "MAD" moms. 

GOLDEN, Colo. — There's a reason the expression goes "You look like your dog just died." Losing a dog is a sadness so profound that it's useless to explain to anyone who hasn't been through it.

In fact, finding others who understand is probably the only way to get through it. This story will explain how this devoted skeptic of social media found it to be a great source of comfort during my time of great need.

Many of you know that last year I traveled America with my golden retriever, sniffing out scams and ripoffs as part of "Bob and Lucky's Hidden Fee Tour of America." (There was even a theme song.) Naturally, Lucky stole the show, getting on national TV twiceand appearing live on local TV in several towns along the way from Washington to Seattle. His pawprint was far more popular than my signature at every book signing. We made hundreds of friends in dozens of newsrooms, bookstores, hotels and rest stops along the way. He spent nearly all of those 3,000 miles with his head nudged onto my right shoulder, leaving drool stains on the right arm of every shirt I had brought for the trip.

We were all set to make the same trip this summer, but Lucky decided to go on a longer road trip instead, taking the expressway to dog Heaven on June 11. He was roughly 10 years old — he was a rescue, and he landed in my life eight years ago — and the calendar said I should be ready for this. I was not. He acted like a puppy until the day he died. Right to his last afternoon, every muscle of his oversize body was desperate to say hello to every man, woman and squirrel we encountered. So it was a complete shock when he died of heart trouble — an enlarged heart, to no surprise — during one horrible night at the vet a few weeks ago.

I am writing this piece in Golden, Colo. — that’s an accident, but a good one. Lucky sure would have liked it here: My hotel is crawling with dogs.  

* * *

Comparing personal tragedies is a game you should never play, and I would never dare say my sadness is equal to that of anyone who's lost a job, a home or a child. I will say simply that in losing Lucky this month, my sorrow is complete. When I finally got home to my family about 5 a.m. that awful night, I lay in bed wide awake and could feel every cell of my body hurt. I can still feel that as I type now. No one, nowhere, will ever love me like Lucky did. He was typically food-obsessed, scarfing every meal in seconds, but there was one time he wouldn't eat — if I were rushing in the morning and threw food in his bowl on my way out the door. On those occasions, when I came home after work, I would find his food still in the bowl. In the morning, he'd followed me to the door, laid down and waited there for me all day. The second I opened the door, he'd say a quick hello, and then the poor starved animal would run to eat his breakfast at 6 p.m. He just couldn't eat without me. Now, I feel the same way.

This kind of loss leaves you searching for answers, and in the sleepless nights that followed I spent a lot of time fruitlessly reading about enlarged hearts, alternatively looking for an explanation that might calm my racing analytical mind or an excuse to blame myself for the ailment to distract my aching heart. 

You probably know the ending to that trip. I found no answers. But I did find a lot of places to share. For all its faults, the Internet is very good at sharing. In particular, for all the scary things about social media — Facebook's consistent abuse of privacy and the Twitterverse’s self-absorption — I found these tools indispensible in my grief.

Sharing makes nothing better. It doesn't replace a wet nose, a joyful face, the endless presence of love that follows you everywhere. But still, sharing eases pain.

* * *

Of course, there’s nothing new about online grieving. People have been finding new and sometimes strange ways to express loss and mourning since the arrival of the Internet. Virtual wakes appeared almost as soon as Web pages did. 

Among the newest forms of digital mourning: following someone on Twitter who has recently died. Ryan Dunn, a TV personality made famous through the TV and movie franchise Jackass, had 30,000 followers before he died in an automobile crash June 22. Now, he has 145,000 after a surge of followers arrived when the news hit. Why would someone follow a recently deceased person? The urge to connect, and the Internet’s ability to deliver it, sometimes both seem to be stronger than even mortality itself.

Online mourning raises sticky issues. You might have noticed not all Web users maintain a sense of decorum or class. Posting a page describing your grief opens you up to hurtful sarcasm, or worse. For that reason, Facebook now offers a “memorial” state for accounts of the deceased that blocks strangers from making posts.

Still, the urge to virtually eulogize — even among strangers — is strong, as evidenced by the success of a relatively new site named 1000Memories.com, which makes it easy for loved ones to create a memorial page for the deceased. It promises to never allow advertising or to charge a subscription fee. Bring your Kleenex if you click.

* * *

As in "real” life, mourning the loss of a pet doesn’t get quite the same regard as mourning the loss of a person, and perhaps it shouldn’t. You can’t tell me that right now, however.

When Lucky first died, I spent a lot of time reading Web sites that offer advice on surviving the loss of a beloved pet. There's many places offering tips on how to cope. I suspect some would find them helpful. I did not. The sheer amount of people discussing the problem helped me hang on to my sanity, however. A couple of the better sites are here and here.

There are also a number of sites that allow grieving pet owners to post memorials of their lost dogs, with pictures and paragraphs that serve as online odes to the beloved pets. Some of these post advertisements; some promise not to. I chose not to put Lucky on any of these sites, but reading through the stories there, I found,  helped a little. Misery loves company. Here’s a few:

http://www.dogquotations.com/write-a-memorial.html

http://www.critters.com/

http://www.ilovedmypet.com/

http://www.pets-memories.com/

http://www.petsremembrance.com/

But using the Internet as part of the mourning process, rather than just a source of information, was much more effective, I learned. Plus, I was facing an immediate problem. Lucky was a social butterfly and had hundreds of close friends. And I'd already promised readers another Red Tape road trip with Lucky as the mascot for my blog. How would I tell everyone?

When someone you love dies, there is always the complicated and painful affair of telling others about the tragedy. The conversations often force you relive the horrible moments, when people naturally ask questions like "How did it happen?" No one knows what to say, and you, as the recipient of the kindness, always sense that and spend your energy trying to make sympathizers feel better instead of saving your strength for you.

When a dog dies, less sensitive non-dog-owners will inevitably ask a dumb question like "So, are you going to get another dog now?" as if you were trading in a used car. Others will just breeze past the sadness with a trite "He had a good life," and change the subject.

It all begins to feel like piling on, and sometimes you just can't face all that pain at once.

Facebook turned out to be a powerful friend in this dilemma.  I wrote a simple status update that explained the basics and created a photo album for Lucky. I was able to tell most of my friends and family at once. It was the most effective way I could avoid telling and re-telling the story hundreds of times. As is custom now, I changed my Facebook avatar picture to an image of Lucky, which signals to Facebook users that something might be wrong. I did the same with my professional Facebook page, letting readers know that he wouldn’t make my coming trip for the saddest of reasons; I called attention to the notice by Tweeting it. 

I was surprised that pressing "share" on Facebook turned out to be another one of those painful goodbye moments, like packing up his dog toys or placing his dog collar around my car's rear-view mirror. I knew it would set off another chain reaction of sadness, but I was committed to getting that part over with as soon as I could.

I expected to cry again.  I didn't expect the incredible outpouring of love that came flying through the Internet during the next 48 hours. There is just something about losing a dog, and either you know about it or you don't. I heard from hundreds of people who did, strangers who expressed deep sympathy and then sent me their own tales about their beloved pets who'd passed away. One woman I heard from was even named Sullivan and had lost her dog named Lucky.

The notes I got from friends touched my heart even more. Many confessed to secretly giving treats to my dog when I wasn’t watching (I was very strict) or reminded me of long-forgotten sweet moments. I won't tire you with stories of how special Lucky was. Your dog is just as special, no doubt. But Lucky lived an amazing life and brought not just joy but healing everywhere he went.  Indulge me this one tale:

A friend and co-worker told me a secret I'd never heard that was seven years old. She'd lost a baby to a rare childhood illness, and would often seek out Lucky when the depths of her sadness were unbearable. "Things just seemed better" after playing with him, she said. "He just seemed to get people, intuit what they needed and purely, simply offered love."

My dog was able to comfort a woman grieving the loss of her baby, and I never even knew about it. Oh, did that make me cry. Every time I re-read her note, I cry.

But somehow, things seemed better. All these kind thoughts, these memories, these well-wishes — they felt as important as food and water to me during this time.

I think this point is particularly important for men, who in are society are neither well equipped to give nor to receive this kind of emotional outpouring in public. I was able to privately read these notes over and over when I needed to, particularly when a wave of sadness came, and somehow, it did make things better. I was in awe of how much good Lucky did in his short life.

None of this has made hotel rooms less lonely as I make my way across country now. I miss the way Lucky would charge into each new room, taking complete inventory of the place with his nose and then try to beat me to the toilet bowl. His breathing at night —even his snoring — was more powerful than any sleeping pill. It’s so strange not having to wake up early and run outside to search for just the right patch of grass so Lucky can  do his business.

Sharing things on social networks is hardly foolproof. Despite how it seems, not everyone reads Facebook every day. Plenty of readers and sources I've encountered on this road trip have still asked me why Lucky wasn't with me. Then they felt bad, and I felt bad. 

But Facebook and Twitter saved me hundreds of these dreadful encounters and eased my pain. For me, it was the perfect tool for tastefully sharing bad news and for facing grief head on. Social media 1, social media critic 0.

 I know I will get another dog someday, probably sooner than seems right now. As another friend put it, "another fellow will just wander up to your campfire when the time is right." But that's not until I get over the irrational anger I feel every time I see a healthy dog running, jumping and wagging his tail. I'm going to be sad for a while, and that's how this is supposed to work. For now, I will hope and pray that whatever family has my future rescue pet today is taking good care of him and that whatever the reason they will eventually put him up for adoption, the pain of separation will not be too great for them or him. 

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OMAHA, Neb. — On the fourth floor of Douglas County Courthouse, Jaimee Napp opened a new front in the war on identity theft. She did something every ID theft victim has probably dreamed of doing: Napp sued her imposter in civil court for damages.

This first battle didn't go well.

District Judge John Hartigan interrupted the closing arguments by beginning a debate on the meaning of term "identity theft" ("It's not like someone took her soul."). After Napp's therapist said she was suffering from symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder, defense attorney Tim Mikulicz said that claim was a "slap in the face to every soldier returning from Iraq."

Civil court, for now, is unfriendly territory for identity theft victims.

In fact, a new study being released this week shows that ID theft victims are denied rights granted other crime victims — like restitution hearings or notice of court appearances — in 14 states.

After a two-year battle for her day in civil court, Rapp spent nearly two hours justifying expenses and allowed her therapist to share intimate details about her sense of paranoia following her bout with ID theft. Legally speaking, it seemed to get her nowhere. 

There's no question about the guilt of Napp's defendant, Jackie Brown, who was Napp's co-worker in a small Omaha retail shop six years ago. Brown rifled through the firm's files and stole Napp's Social Security number and gave it to her then-boyfriend. The stolen data was then used in attempts to open credit card accounts. Brown said in court Monday that she was a methamphetamine addict at the time and didn't remember many details of the incident. 

Napp says trauma from the ID theft led her to feeling unsafe at work and led to bouts of paranoia throughout her life. She regularly suspected she was being followed when she drove home from work, often circling the block several times. She suffered nightmares. She entered counseling, ultimately undergoing 44 sessions of treatment for what was diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. Ultimately, she was fired from her job at ConAgra Foods for non-performance. 

Brown said in court Monday that she spent five months in jail after pleading guilty to theft by deception, then spent none more months in a halfway house after completing a drug treatment program. She said she's now "clean" and has gainful employment.

Napp described the period after the crime as a slow descent into psychological torture. She was worried about all the other co-workers who could access her personal information and worried about possible retribution from her imposter.

"I felt like I couldn't trust my co-workers, my managers," she said. "I wore an iPod all the time so no one would talk to me. ... I changed my hair color. I sold my car because she knew what kind of car I drive," Napp said. "This incident changed me. ... I wish I could just move on, but this incident will follow me forever."

While Napp's imposter has not attempted any additional acts of identity theft, a bounced check ended up on Napp's credit record in 2009 after someone paid for gas in nearby Council Bluffs using a check with her Social Security number on it.

Napp asked the court to grant her damages of $46,000, accounting for out-of-pocket expenses like credit monitoring, the costs of therapy treatments, lost time to deal with the mess and lost wages. 

It's impossible to predict how the judge might ultimately rule when he hands down his decision in a week or so, but Hartigan's tone during closing arguments gave Napp and her attorney, Harris Kuhn, little hope that she would win.

"There is no law in Nebraska which makes this an easy argument," Kuhn said. 

While the logic of forcing someone to pay for damages caused by committing ID theft might seem sound, Kuhn said the only legal argument available to him under Nebraska law was a so-called "conversion" claim, which translates loosely as the civil equivalent of criminal theft. But a conversion claim — which traditionally might involve disputes such as a neighbor's unjustly milking another's cows — requires establishment of damages. Despite 77 pages of receipts, phone bills and health care records, Hartigan seemed unconvinced that any real damages had occurred.

Napp "has not testified to any loss," he said. "She hasn't been charged more for credit."

The judge also didn't interrupt during the defense attorney's closing argument, as Mikulicz said Napp should "move on" from the incident.

"I don't think it's an act to make you jump up and down and say, 'That's outrageous behavior,'" said Mikulicz said. "Again, with all due respect, saying she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder is a slap in the face to every soldier who's served in Iraq, in Vietnam, in Korea ... and to every rape victim."

Napp openly wept as he finished. But later, she was philosophical about her day in court.

"Even though things didn't go well today, I think I did something great today," she said.

After two years of therapy, Napp began working as a consultant and slowly gained a reputation as an identity theft victim expert — a path her therapist said was part of her healing process. Napp works for the federal government as an expert consultant on victim rights. She is also head of the Identity Theft Action Council of Nebraska, has testified before Congress and has urged the National Crime Victim Law Institute to study ID theft victims' legal rights.

That agency's research, released Tuesday, shows that in 14 states, ID theft victims aren't recognized as "victims" under the state's victim rights statute — including Nebraska. In many states, victim status grants a clear legal path for a civil action designed to recover money damages.

"I just have to keep fighting," Napp said. "I'm hopeful at some point judges will understand and be more educated about this type of crime and there will be different outcomes."

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CHICAGO — Ron and Cheryl Schmalz think they know one reason the U.S. housing market is stuck. They just spent more than two years and created about 50 pounds' worth of paper trying to get a $300-per-month modification to their mortgage. 

Nearly every month for the past two years, the Schmalzes received a warning from their mortgage holder, JP Morgan Chase, that the bank was about to foreclose on their home and that late fees were mercilessly piling up. Nearly every two months, the couple would dutifully fax in a pile of paperwork reminding the firm that they were participating in its loan modification program and making trial payments prescribed by the bank.

"We had 17 different relationship managers," said Ron Schmalz. "They just make you file the same papers again and again and again. And each time you get a new manager, you have to start over. The last time we thought we had a permanent modification, we got another call that said, 'Hi, I'm your new representative.' It makes you crazy."

There are many troubling clogs in the mortgage pipeline that are keeping the housing market stuck — lenders aren't lending; there are too many homes for sale; there's a lack of buyers because of poor employment prospects. But one critical clog is the limbo faced by homeowners who can't afford their full mortgage payments any longer but who could survive if their loans were refinanced or modified. In 2009, the Obama administration launched its Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), estimating it would help keep 5 million families in their home — and keep 4 million empty houses off the market, critical to the health of the housing market. At the same time, banks committed to continuing their similar, parallel proprietary modification processes.

The Schmalzes' odyssey is a window into the challenges faced by homeowners looking for help, by government regulators trying to prop up the failing market and by banks trying to pick the right bets among mortgage holders who might be able to pay some, but not all, of their monthly payments.

The Schmalz family has a happy ending. After two years of effort, the monthly payment on their Chicago-area home was reduced from about $1,175 a month to $861. It's not a free ride: Their original $90,000 mortgage is now a $98,000 mortgage, and the couple will make up for the lowered payments with additional payments on the end of the loan. 

Still, the break the couple got in April represents the end of a nightmare that began in September 2008, when Ron lost his job in telecommunications and the couple told the bank it needed help. It's a Red Tape wrestling match that Ron Schmalz says can break the spirit of homeowners who might otherwise be able to ride out the rough employment market.

"You keep going and you keep giving and you keep doing and you keep faxing and you keep calling to no avail. And you just feel like you're a gerbil," said Ron. "You're sitting in a wheel going nowhere."

Right after losing his job, Ron Schmalz began working with Washington Mutual, the original mortgage holder, on the modification paperwork. By early 2009, it was clear the application was in trouble, as Chase's acquisition of Washington Mutual had thrown things into disarray. After a few rounds of resubmitting required tax forms, income statements and monthly budgets, the Schmalzes were denied. 

Ron Schmalz had found a new job by then, albeit at a lower salary, and for a few months in 2009, the couple tried to keep up with their $1,100 payments. But then Cheryl lost her job, they missed a payment, and they resubmitted their application. Working with Chase's proprietary modification program, rather than the government's HAMP program, they were given a temporary modified payment around $800 per month. The couple says they dutifully made the new payments beginning in January 2010 and were told that within three months that Chase would decide whether the adjustment would be made permanent or rescinded, so either way, they could move on with their lives. 

Then, 14 months passed.

Letters saying "We are prepared to start foreclosure proceedings" arrived every month. Ironically, they all included instructions on how to enter a loan modification program.

Almost as frequently, the Schmalz family says, they were told they'd forgotten to submit a tax form or an income form, or that their file was incomplete, so no decision could be made. With nearly every conversation, there was a new "relationship manager."

"It's about obstacles. It's about what they placed in front of us to make this modification a reality. It made things very difficult," Ron said.

There's no way to know who's to blame for paperwork mishaps, but the Schmalzes brought quite an organized pile of documents and file folders with them to show a reporter.

"Things got so tense that we were at each other's throat, saying: 'Did you file this? Didn't you file that?' You know, sometimes blaming each other," said Cheryl. By that point, they'd fallen behind by $10,000, and "the tune of our conversations with Chase got nasty."

In the middle of 2010, the couple turned to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan looking for help.

After a flurry of complaints dogged the various loan modification programs, Madigan's office had created a special division to deal with consumers facing the Schmalzes' plight. The agency gets about 200 calls per week to its mortgage help hotline, said Christine Nielsen, who heads the division. It brought on two full-time housing counselors to help homeowners submit loan modification requests to banks; still, she's seen the difficulty consumers have when working with banks. Despite a flurry of complaints about modification applications in late 2010, homeowners are still being left in the lurch.

"Consumers are still having a fair amount of difficulty getting answers from banks about their loan modification applications," she said. She said the Schmalz case was typical of the problems consumers are encountering, but some are much worse. One recent applicant was turned down for a modification by another bank (not Chase) because of a difference of $20 per month, she said.

Chase wouldn't discuss the specifics of the Schmalz case, other than to say the firm provided the family with a "special forbearance" in 2010 and a modification in 2011.

"In general, we need complete and current information from a customer to make a modification decision," a Chase spokesman said. 

Timely processing of modification applications is essential to the housing market recovery, said Madigan.

"Our nation continues to be in the grips of a home foreclosure crisis of unprecedented proportions. Meaningful loan modifications — ones that truly reduce a homeowner's payments to affordable levels — can save homes, yet people often face serious obstacles attempting to navigate the loan modification process on their own," Madigan said. "Resources provided by my office and other HUD-certified housing counselors can help people received a modification by ensuring banks comply with federal modification guidelines."

As the modification process drags out over months, or even years, it's easy to understand the problem facing both banks and consumers. Generally, banks are working off an affordability formula based on income. Financial circumstances change; applicants can and do lose or recover income after they submit an application, which requires a recalculation. That explains part of the delay faced by the Schmalz family.

Excessive delays, however, lead inevitably to such changes. A family that applies for help because of a loss of income will be working immediately to replace that income. That places them squarely in a catch-22 — success finding a job could lead to failure in a loan modification application or, more specifically, in the conversion of a temporary to a permanent modification. The delays leave the family in a perpetual state of uncertainty, with a pile of threatening bank letters rising. It also leaves the housing market in uncertainty — no one knows how many trial modifications will ultimately be rejected, with the likely outcome that the owners will lose their home and the house will be thrust onto the already-saturated housing market. The most recent data on the administration's HAMP modifications show that only about one-third of 2 million modifications have been made permanent. Millions of other homeowners are engaged in proprietary bank modifications.

Even as the bills and foreclosure notices piled up last year, Nielsen's office told the Schmalzes to keep making their trial modification payment in order to demonstrate their ability to satisfy the lowered obligation. Finally, in April, the Schmalzes got the good news they'd been dreaming about.

"Essentially, we got a refinance," Ron Schmalz said. "But they could have done this at Day 1 for us. We're not upset with the result; we're happy with it. We're just upset with the process. We just don't understand why it took this long."

That's the question nearly every observer of the housing market is asking about a potential recovery.

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You're blissfully hurtling down a desolate stretch of interstate at 70 mph, singing along with your iPod. The scenery is spectacular, the sun is shining, and things couldn't be better. Then you round a bend and suddenly the sky turns midnight black. There's lightning and a thunderclap that feels like it comes from your back seat.  There's a trickle of rain, followed seconds later by a downpour, then hail. The highway isn't desolate any more, as you've caught up to all other drivers who are crawling along at 10 mph because they can barely see 50 feet. What do you do?

Many U.S. adults do exactly the wrong thing, contradicting the advice given by the National Weather Service and potentially putting themselves and their families in serious danger.

The American road trip is as much a part of our nation's fabric as apple pie and baseball. Nothing restores the soul like remembering how big and beautiful this land is. It's important to remember that road trips are more journey than vacation, however. Things can and do go wrong.  Bad weather is at the top of that list.  You simply can't drive coast to coast without hitting a few bad storms. 

IN A BEAUTIFUL GARDEN, DETROIT -- To call Esther Shapiro the Ralph Nader of Michigan is to compliment Ralph Nader. 

The arc of her life runs perfectly parallel to the birth, life, and near death of America's consumer movement -- in fact, you might call her its grandmother.  Now 93, Shapiro still lists herself as a "consumer consultant" in the phone book. But she frets about the state of the economy, the fate of her beloved Detroit, but most of all, about the lack of effective consumer protections across America.

From 1974 to1988 she ran Detroit's forward thinking Office of Consumer Protection, perhaps the most active agency of its type in the country. She had real power; she could revoke a firm's business license if it misbehaved, she could bar it from advertising in Detroit newspapers. She had a regular radio segment and newspaper column. She filed lawsuits, got refunds for jilted consumers, and -- with the help of her police commissioner husband -- put bad guys in jail. By the time she was forced to retire at age 80, she had vast files on every possible consumer scam -- and a heart full of stories from grateful consumers who she'd helped.

Early in her career, she helped stop a widespread scam run by criminals who took deposits from people desperate for leads on cheap apartments, then never furnished the leads. She was able to get refunds for some victims, and told me about one woman who showed up to collect her money.

"She just kind of grabbed it, like you would grab food if you were hungry. Then she said to me, 'Do you know what it's like to be a welfare mother and be cheated out of your last dollar?’ And walked away. That really stuck with me," Shapiro said.

AT SOUTH STREET COFFEE SHOP, WILMINGTON, OHIO -- When you visit a town of 12,000 people that recently lost 10,000 jobs, you'd expect to find a lot of things:  boarded up homes, abandoned gas stations and empty storefronts to name a few.

What I found in Wilmington, Ohio, was something I didn't expect: opportunity. 

Small town America has struggled with brain drain since the invention of the automobile. But as it attempts to rise from the ashes of an economic nightmare, this 200-year-old town may have discovered a revolutionary way to attract and keep its young people.

For decades, this small town in southwest Ohio served as crossroads for travelers shuttling between Kentucky and Detroit.  It now sits at a crossroads of the American economy. Every day since the massive DHL package facility that employed the majority of Wilmington's residents closed in 2009, the town has had to ask itself: Will this disaster destroy us, or be our rebirth?

Wilmington has become America's small town in the past three years, a media darling because the recession hit here with almost unmatched brutality.  Jay Leno has been here, and so have "60 Minutes" (twice), Rachel Ray and Glen Beck. It is the lead anecdote in a story about America's disappearing small towns.

There's good reason for that. The discussions taking place on Main Street or in the coffee house may be about local issues, but in the voices of Wilmington's faithful, you hear America talking. 

AT A BUS STOP, IN PITTSBURGH -- Like nearly every other city in America, after three hard recessionary years, the fiscal gyrations of robbing Peter to pay Paul have pretty much been exhausted in Pittsburgh. 

Hard decisions about government services are now unavoidable, and the city's Port Authority transportation agency made one the hardest in March -- cutting 29 bus routes and reducing service on 37 more.  Far more severe cutbacks that would have slashed bus service by one-third were stalled by a one-time time cash windfall, but the clock is ticking on those Draconian budget measures designed to plug a $50 million budget gap. Steeper bus cuts are set for 2012, unless millions in new revenue magically appears.

For Jon Robison, the numbers are much more tangible.

"Some days, one, two, even three buses pass me by because they are too full," Robison said.  "So even if you still have bus service, the buses are overcrowded."

Robison, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, relies on public transit to get around. Bus access is one of the reasons the 67-year-old moved with his wife to the east Pittsburgh neighborhood of Oakland five years ago.  He's even president of the transit service's public advisory board. But that doesn't mean he’s exempt from being left waiting in his wheelchair on the sidewalk when a bus flies by that doesn’t have room for him.

"I keep saying if the Legislature won't fund buses, at least it could legalize hitchhiking," he said. 

In Washington D.C., with a full tank of gas -- Mark Rembert isn't just fighting for Wilmington, Ohio. He says he's fighting for the survival -- in fact, the very soul -- of small town America. 

Rembert, 26, graduated from Wilmington High School in 2003 and moved away to find opportunity. But five years later, a different kind of opportunity emerged back home.   

If you look at a recession scorecard, you'll see that Wilmington is the hardest-hit town in Clinton County, which is the hardest hit county in Ohio, which is among the hardest-hit states in the union. The basics are simple – Wilmington, a quaint place in southwestern Ohio not far from the Kentucky border,  has 12,000 residents and, in 2008, delivery firm DHL closed its 10,000-job operation in the town's air park. But Rembert, who had opportunities in places like New York or Philadelphia, decided to go home to try to save his small town. He now heads the county Chamber of Commerce and is part of a development fund trying to attract new businesses to Wilmington.

Rembert’s battle is a fight you'll find all across America, as the nation's economic malaise settles into to its third year and the dreaded double-dip recession looms. At this crucial juncture in the U.S. battle to get out of the quicksand laid by the burst of the housing bubble in 2008, msnbc.com's Red Tape Chronicles is taking a second annual road trip across the country. We'll visit small, medium, and large towns, and listen to people tell their stories of trying to get ahead -- or stay afloat -- while the dual pressures of dogged unemployment and government spending cutbacks continue to turn the screws.