"Go with a sealed bearing BB and be done."
Not easily done with French threads in the BB, although there are several fixes for this. They range from retapping the thread to Italian, or using Phil Wood BB mounting rings and a shimano UN72 or a Phil BB, or using BB made for BB shells with stripped thread, available at biketoolsetc.com. There might be other methods I am unaware of.
Does your crank have cotter pins? If it doesn't, it's been rebuilt. Again, without seeing the bike it's hard for me to tell you the options, and frankly, I'm not sure I trust your shop, but then, I don't trust any shop.
Some basic help on French stuff is here:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/velos.html
Also some good definitions of various terms.
I'd pick up a basic book on bike maintanence, it can help more than us. 70's editions of Richard's Bicycle Book have a very good basic maintanence section in the back, and this book can usually be found cheaply at used bookstores.