By Any Other Name

Bernard Walton has just finished washing the windows at Whit's End, and he is already grumbling that they will be covered in fingerprints again by tomorrow. When John Whittaker sits down to write him a check, Bernard stops him. The check should not be made out to Walton's Janitorium anymore. From now on it needs to say Walton's Hygienic Maintenance and Engineering Company.

That, Whit says, is an awfully fancy name for cleaning up. Bernard insists it is the only way to survive. At a meeting down at City Hall, a specialist consultant from Chicago warned the shop owners of Odyssey that corporate takeovers and mergers are coming to swallow up every little privately owned business in town. His advice was simple: change your name so people can see you are keeping up with progress. The corner grocery has already done it, and even the bank has decided to start calling checks transaction notes. Whit thinks the whole thing sounds like double talk. Bernard warns him that the consultant is visiting every business in town, so he will get to Whit's End sooner or later.

Curt Stevens comes racing through the shop looking for Lucy Cunningham-Schultz. A classmate's family is moving away, which leaves an opening for a new student council representative, and Curt has decided the job should be his. He is not exactly driven by a love of school government. Council members sit around talking about school rules and merit badges, and they get an A in social studies for doing it - no homework required. First, though, he has to be elected, and for that he needs a campaign manager.

Lucy thinks he is crazy, but Curt flatters and pleads until she gives in. She organizes a rally on a single morning's notice, and she is amazed when a huge crowd shows up. The reason becomes clear when a kid hollers about ice cream. Curt has quietly promised free ice cream to everyone who attends, and he does not have any. He launches into his speech anyway, vowing free ice cream in the cafeteria every day, an end to homework, more holidays, and more breaks from class. The crowd cheers. Curt hurries Lucy out the door before anyone discovers there is no ice cream.

Afterward, Lucy quits. She will not manage a candidate who lies. Curt argues that his speech was not lying at all - it was rhetoric, the flavoring politicians sprinkle on a speech the way salt goes on a potato chip. He will admit the ice cream was a lie, but he insists the promises were something else entirely. Lucy tells him that calling it a fancy name does not change what it is, and she walks away.

Meanwhile, the consultant arrives. Phil Phillips introduces himself as a marketing expert from Chicago, cheerfully calls Whit by the wrong name, and announces that Whit's End is floundering, or soon will be. He comes back later with blueprints Whit never ordered. The train set should become the Fireball 5000. The Imagination Station should be renamed the Thriller Thruster and cost five dollars a ride. Best of all, the shop itself should be called the Raw Metal Power Push Starcade. Nothing inside has to change at all, Phillips explains proudly. Only the sign out front. And, of course, there is his fee.

With Curt listening, Whit asks a few plain questions. Which company in Chicago? Which accounts? Phillips has no answers, because Whit has already checked. His marketing friends in Chicago have never heard of Phil Phillips, but the police there know him well as Phil the Flim Flam Man, a con artist who makes his living tricking small-town business owners out of their money. In another time, Whit says, nobody would have called him a consultant. Phillips suddenly remembers some errands and hurries out - straight toward the detectives waiting outside.

Curt is astonished that Whit let him walk out the door, and even more astonished that Whit saw through him. The lesson, Whit explains, is the same one he has been trying to give Curt all along. The train set is the same train set whether it is called the Iron Bucket or the Fireball 5000. A new label never changes what is underneath. People play that same game with wrongdoing, hoping that a nicer word makes it stop being wrong, but a lie is still a lie even when it is called rhetoric or a campaign promise. There is still time, Whit points out, to amend those promises before tomorrow's election. Curt agrees, though he suspects that telling the truth is political suicide.

The next day Bernard is happily retelling how Phillips was chased out of Odyssey, and complaining that a con man gets to skip town while an honest window washer gets ticketed for jaywalking. Their conversation is interrupted by Curt, who blurs past with barely a goodbye and pounds up the stairs. Lucy arrives right behind him with the news: Curt won the election. She also reports that he made a whole batch of fresh campaign promises to the voters that very morning, minutes before the ballots were cast, and now his classmates have come to collect. Curt hides while Whit calls him back down and Bernard shouts at the crowd to keep their hands off his clean windows.