L. P. Black

First, there was L. P. Black. (The name has been changed to protect the guilty.) I never heard him called anything but L.P. Maybe all the name he had was just initials. He started doing business with the TV shop before I came on the scene, and had gained a reputation long before I came to know him.

L.P. had an old TV that he was advised to put out of its misery the first time he brought it in, but he refused to do so. It was a mistake, as he learned. As fortune would have it, it seemed that as soon as he paid the bill, some other component would give up the ghost, and back in the shop it would go.

This happened with such insidious regularity that he became convinced that somehow we could tell when something was going to go out, or that we put in old parts that we knew would fail soon, and stressed others so they failed prematurely. If I could have done so, I’d have been able to make more than $1.25 an hour, I assure you.

L.P. would come in and wail about the size of his bill, and how his little boy was driving him crazy because he didn’t have a TV to watch. Occasionally, he brought his brother to back up his demands that we fix the TV so it wouldn’t break again. His brother was big enough and looked mean enough to fix you so you wouldn’t break again, either.

But the cries and veiled threats didn’t do any good. History repeated itself many times before L.P. departed our door for the last time.

My partner in the shop, Don, missed his calling. He should have gone on tour as a standup comic. He would sit on his stool in the back of the shop, and do his L.P. Black impression while I cackled at him.

"You damn TV robbers! How come you treat us poor black folks so bad? I’m gonna git my brother and we’re going to come over here and cut yo’ a-nine ways! My name is Long Playing Black, and I’m sick an’ tired of you damn white guys doing us poor folk so bad!"

Don had no mercy for L.P. "I told him the first time he brought that antique piece of junk in here that it wasn’t worth fixin’," he’d say, waving a screwdriver at me.

In L.P.’s defense, I must admit he had the worst luck I ever saw. His TV spent most of the time in the shop during the two years I worked there, but we all breathed a sigh of relief when my boss reported L.P. to the personnel office because he wouldn’t pay his bill, and he came storming in to pay, get his TV and leave, saying "You’ll never see me in here again. I’ll never bring anything in this place as long as I live."

And he never did, either. For which we were all grateful.