#Jesus and the #Stain, part 3 in #Santa #Fe

When they arrived, I was told that Jesus had a clinic or doctor’s appointment the day before.  They also sadly told me that they would do no staining.  Today.

         About two hours before they finished the job, the uncle informed me that Jesus would appreciate it if his fee would be paid in cash.  If I paid with a check, Jesus would be forced to add tax to the bill. 

I pointed out that cash machines rarely allow patrons to take out over $700 in a single day.  Would he accept full payment tomorrow?

         No, tomorrow he was working at Los Alamos, which is more than an hour away.   He would have to be paid today.

So I rushed to the Agora near the entrance to El Dorado, where I had seen a cash machine.  I asked for $800 and got a printed response something like “You gotta be kidding.”  Then I requested $400 and got the cash.  So I went back and asked for more, but each time I was told “You have exceeded your limit.  Use some other cash machine to buy your drugs, you filthy addict.”   

When I got back to the house, I said I had $400 in cash and asked if a $350 check would be all right.  It was fine, I counted the money, the uncle counted the money and, after handing Jesus the check for $350, we again solemnly shook hands.  It ended with dignity and no stain.   

#Jesus and the Stain continued in #Santa #Fe

Jesus and the stain, continued.

         We became concerned after noon, when there was no sight of Jesus or the crew.   So I called Bob, who exploded with invectives and complaints.  He promised to call Jesus and straighten everything out.

         About two hours later while I at the local gym doing an hour on the treadmill, I got a call from Jesus, who either said that he was painting the kitchen right now, or they needed to go to lunch, or he had a doctor’s appointment.  In trying to understand him, any of those translations sounded about right.

         About an hour later, I got a call from Jesus’s uncle informing me that the entire crew would be back some time tomorrow. 

Ten minutes later, Bob called to say that Jesus was going to various hardware stores looking for the stain that we didn’t want.  He had discovered that the original manufacturer was no longer making it and he was trying to match the color of the original stain.

I asked Bob if he heard me plainly state that we didn’t want any stain, that stain was not part of the job, that we would not pay for stain or staining, that stain was never, ever, never to be done on our house.  Bob said he not only heard that we didn’t want stain, he recalled also shouting the words, “NO STAIN.”  Obviously something was lost in the translation. 

to Stain or Not to Stain in #Santa #Fe

I repeated the words, then Bob, Grace and I all said, in unison, as if we were the Greek chorus from Ace Hardware, “NO STAIN.”

         Jesus looked at us and said, “OK, I get stain.”

         We repeated back and forth, “No stain,” to his “OK stain” response for several more minutes until both sides thought everything was perfectly understandable.

       Then, it took more than an hour for Jesus to come up with an estimate of what the job would cost, understandable, since the first bid was $1,000, considerably higher than what we pay Bob ($25/hour).  When we turned pale and loudly gulped, the price immediately went down to $800 (after a brief conversation between Jesus and his newspaper-reading uncle.)   Then we asked what would happen if Jesus didn’t paint the wall  outside the closet near the master bedroom. 

         So we settled on a no-stain, no-bedroom-wall price of $750.  Everybody shook hands, including Grace and the uncle.

         Then Jesus announced that his entire crew would have to leave to pick up equipment.  And the two trucks and the four men disappeared. That was 9 am. 

#Bob leads us to #Jesus in #Santa #Fe

Bob led us to Jesus.    Although, for most jobs, Bob does the work himself, bringing in his two teen-aged sons to provide additional muscle when necessary and even promising that his wife might be available.  But when the job is too technical or complicated, meaning painting or preserving wood, Bob promises that “the Mexicans” are perfect.  He means Jesus, a man who has been in America for three decades and who speaks English with an accent so heavy that he seems to be talking gibberish.   We hired Jesus to re-paint Grace’s office and to apply preservative to the wooden columns facing the New Mexican elements.

         The day of the preservation, Jesus, always dignified and a little shy, showed up with three other people, including his uncle, who read the newspaper all day when he wasn’t serving as the translator.  I think the rest of the crew included an uncle or a nephew and a friend.  With four people standing around and not doing much, they did resemble a Chicago street repair crew, with a foreman who does nothing, two to five others who stand around, watching or going for cigarettes, and one unlucky guy who slowly shovels dirt.

         Jesus somehow got it into his mind that we needed or wanted to stain the exposed exterior wood, although we did not suggest it.  I think he came upon that idea because, while looking through our somewhat vast collection of half-empty paint cans (scheduled for hazardous recycling but somehow never getting there), I found some stain that the original owner, Eric, the cheapest man on Earth, left because he probably could find no Earthly use for it in his new home.

         Not knowing what this murky, brownish liquid was, hoping that it was more preservative (we were told that the exposed exterior wood needed to be preserved every few years to prevent it from falling apart), I showed it to Jesus, who immediately exclaimed that this was stain.  Then he showed me how the stain would look if applied to the wood.

         On the advice of Bob, who was standing by observing our transaction, and after a warning look from Grace that said, “Keep the cost of the job as low as possible,” I said, “No stain.”

         But Jesus was very enthusiastic.  He began to shout and jump about, “Stain.  So simple.  First, stain; then, preserve.  No?”

         “NO,” I said.  “No stain.”

         Bob backed me up, “Listen, Jesus, no stain.  Just preserve.  But no stain.”

         Grace said, “No stain.”

More about #Bob in #Santa #Fe

More about Bob, the handyman:

       For instance:  We had a leak in the pipes that control our irrigation.  Bob decided that the valve top, which was plastic, had a little tiny leak, which could be fixed with epoxy.  HE squished the epoxy into the valve top and , presto, pronounced it fixed, a considerable savings compared to replacing the entire valve.  He returned the next morning to turn on the irrigation water and, presto, everything worked.   Later that evening, I went to the pipes because I wanted to manually set the sprays for the garden.  The valve was leaking about as fast as it was when I First noticed the leak.

         I called Bob, who returned the next morning and replaced the entire valve (leaving the defective parts on top of the contraption so I’d know what was fixed) without ever calling us.  He must have had a real emergency.