I don’t much like to wash cars. It’s one of the reasons I decided to leave Minnesota, my home of nearly forty years, and move to Arizona. I figured that in the desert Southwest, it never snows, and rains but once or twice a year, so I’d hardly ever have to wash a car again.
So one day I quit my job, sold the house, took the kids out of school, packed up all our shit, and told my wife we were moving, all because I hate to wash cars.
As it turns out, I was wrong. Cars still get dirty down here.
The Nordic Warrior Queen likes a clean car. Hers had been dirty for months and I knew I couldn’t postpone it much longer without risking her incredible wrath, so I decided to do a nice thing for her and take it down to the car wash.
I used to go to the manual car wash, the one where you drive into a stall big enough for a semi-truck, and hope that the guy who was there before you didn’t just finish washing a tractor-pull’s worth of mud and gunk from the undercarriage of his 4-wheeler after a weekend of heavy off-roading.
Going to the manual car wash is a little like using a public toilet at a college football game.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad (the carwash, that is). I like the sound of the change machine when you slip in that ten dollar bill. Ching…ching…ching-ching…ching-ching-ching-ching. It’s like a Vegas slot machine on double-payout night. And that swivel jobbie up near the ceiling, the thing that the hose is attached to: I think that’s a pretty clever invention, how it can just go round and round and round without the hose ever getting tangled up.
But I don’t like machines telling me what to do, and that damn beeping machine, the one on the wall that controls the car wash: it’s the worst.
For one thing, it’s expensive, and it doesn’t take debit cards. You have to walk in there with enough quarters stuffed in your pockets to carry Jimmy Hoffa to the bottom of Lake Michigan. It’s damned uncomfortable.
And when you finally do feed the thing enough money to satisfy its hunger, you’ll be halfway done with the car, down there scrubbing the wheels with that awkward spurting brush and listening to the annoying WONK, WONK, WONK of the big plastic hose slamming against the hood of your car and you never see the machine’s flashing light or hear the evil thing beeping at you for more money until three seconds before the cycle ends, so you have to run like hell across that slippery floor and then pull your groin while trying to reach into your front pocket with wet soapy hands only to spill five bucks worth of quarters all over the floor.
That, and your feet get wet. It’s annoying.
So even though the Nordic Warrior Queen says it’s too expensive, I spend a little bit more and go to the automatic car wash. I especially like the Jiffy Queen Super Wash, the one with the smiling purple diamond-crowned octopus on the sign. And I always pick the Super-Duper Jiffy Deluxe package, even though it costs me fifteen bucks and I have to sign a damage waiver before entering. It’s worth every penny.
I love the mechanics of the big car wash: the monstrous rubberized track that grabs the front wheels and pulls you inside the guts of the machine, the swish, swish, swish of the huge rotating brushes and long dangling strips of sudsy cloth, the flesh-cutting power of the pressure washer, and at the end of it all, the hurricane-like roar of the swiveling drier.
And for only two dollars more, you can get the new car smell included in your package.
But it’s not without its risks.
I was there last week to get her SUV washed, hereafter known as the Big Red Car. I handed my debit card over to the cheerful attendant, and then proceeded into the maw of the great machine, ignoring the big sign that warned against possible damage to mud flaps, roof racks, running boards, et cetera.
The rubber track had just engaged and the undercarriage pre-rinse was starting when I realized I’d once again forgotten about the radio antenna. Knowing that the machine made short work of them (I’ve replaced three) I decided I still had time to grab it before the soap cycle started. I quickly dove for the passenger seat, rolled down the window, and had it mostly unscrewed when the wash cycle began. Shit.
Several things happened simultaneously:
1. Water started pouring into the car like the ancient floods of Egypt.
2. The giant brushes grabbed the antenna like the hand of God, ripping it from the hood of the Big Red Car and flinging it the entire length of the car wash, narrowly missing the head of the control booth operator.
3. As I frantically rolled the window back up in an effort to avoid drowning, I panicked, and accidentally turned the steering wheel while engaging the transmission. The Big Red Car leaped forward several feet, stalling the machine while at the same time derailing the rubber track on which I rode.
The Jiffy Queen Car Wash’s Emergency Warning System went into effect. The sound of hooting sirens filled the air, warning lights flashed, flood-control gates crashed, and rubber-suited men rushed into the soapy demesne of the purple octopus.
And into the midst of it all came Hank, the superintendent of the Jiffy Queen Car Wash, a tool-belt-toting, overall-wearing giant of a man who takes the car wash business seriously.
Hank stopped before the Big Red Car to survey the scene. He missed nothing. The radio antenna jutting from the wall of the control booth, the water pouring out the doors of my wife’s SUV, the derailed rubber track of his beloved machine – these became Article 1, 2, and 3 in the evidence against me, and Hank was the judge, jury, and executioner of my case.
He gave me a scathing look, pulled the Big Red Car back onto the track, handed me my antenna, refunded my fifteen dollars (plus $2 for the new car smell) and told me to never come back to the Jiffy Queen. Ever.
Now I’m back to doing manual car washes. Worse, Hank spread the word about me, and I’ve been banned from every car wash in town, so I’m down to washing my car in the driveway. With a hose and a bucket.
I told you I don’t like washing cars.