‘The man looked me right in the eye and lied.’ : Flags and Crosses

I’m the kind of person who is easy to cheat, not because of my simple faith in the honesty of American business (of which I have none), but because I don’t keep up on the current prices of goods and services.

Repairmen rip me off right along with mom-and-pop grocery clerks, and, although I may have a vague feeling this is going on, I’m too lazy to try to prove it, except in gross and clumsy cases.

I mean, you can’t give me change for a one when I hand you a 50, but, other than that, I’m like a rabbit at a water hole when it comes to easy pickin’s.

Which is why, this fresh new year, I sing the “Ballad of Bill Caldwell.” Hum along as best you can.

Bill is a middle-aged Van Nuys building contractor and a Born Again Christian, the kind of guy who honks ‘cause he loves Jesus and is not afraid to look a man in the eye and ask him if he’s marching along with the Lord.

I’m not sure what his attitude might be if you asked him “Lord who?” but it’s probably not a good idea, because he seems the quintessential evolvement of the tough World War II Army chaplain of whom the song was written, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.”

I’ll tell you why I say that.

Bill called a repairman out to the house one day recently to fix an almost-new electric stove. The repairman’s name was Jack, and he’d been in this country from Romania only a few years.

“He fiddled with the stove and said it looked bad, that the job would cost $200,” Bill recalls. “Then he glanced around the house and said maybe even $250 or $300. He was checking out what the market would bear.

“Right away, I began to wonder how he could tell what it would cost when he hadn’t even taken anything apart yet. I was suspicious, to say the least.”

Bill said $250 or $300 was too much, so the repairman right away said, what the hell, it’s the holiday season, make it $190.

Told to go ahead and fix the stove, Jack pulled a part called a selector from the baking area of the oven and said it was no good and had to be replaced.

“While he was doing something else, I picked up the part and looked at it,” Bill said. “There was a piece of tape on the inside, so I put a little mark on the tape. I’m not sure why I marked it. I just had a hunch.”

The repairman left and returned about an hour later with a “new” selector in a box, complaining how difficult it had been to find. Bill looked at the part. His mark was there. It was the same selector old Tricky Jack had removed in the first place.

“During the next few minutes,” Bill said, “the guy must have said five times that the part was new. He’d even written ‘new selector’ on the receipt. The man looked me right in the eye and lied. That really got to me.”

While the repairman worked on the stove, Caldwell telephoned the police and then the city attorney’s office, but they were no help, telling him pretty much to handle it on his own, which he did.

Bill marched back into the kitchen and said, “Jack, have you ever heard of Jesus? Well, we’ve got a problem here, and I think He can help you.”

The repairman stuttered and mumbled while Old Bill went after him with an oral treatise on religion, law enforcement, legal responsibilities, moral commitment and the American Way. You could almost hear trumpets.

“I said, ‘Jack, change your ways. We Americans are not as dumb as you Europeans think we are. We’re just compassionate. You’re lucky to be here and have a job!’ ”

Bill telephoned the place where the man worked.

“Jack’s boss put all the blame on him and told me to throw him out bodily, that he was going to fire him, blah-blah-blah,” Bill said. “What I did was pay Jack $95 for three hours’ work and told him he was lucky he wasn’t going to jail.”

Bill likened himself to the character in the movie “Network” who was madder than hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore.

“I’ve noticed this kind of cheating going on for about the past two years,” he said, “and it’s getting worse, especially among repairmen.

“I decided that no one was going to stop this unless we just got madder than hell and did something about it. People like Jack play on our weaknesses. It’s up to us to show them we’re just not that weak.”

Bill, of course, is right.

I’m not saying you have to come down on your plumber with a cross and a flag, but if that’s what it takes, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

The problem, of course, wasn’t created by repairmen but is rooted in a national ethos that says it’s OK to cheat as long as you don’t get caught, a standard that, by the way, finds new adherents in government because, when caught, they are proclaimed national heroes.

But at least Bill Caldwell nailed one would-be cheat, and maybe he’s out of the rip-off business now.

If Jack is smart, he’ll change his ways, or at least get better at cheating. They’re probably working on that in Washington too.