Car Wash Blues

Up to this point (graduation from high school) I had carefully avoided spending summers in the Valley of the Sun (the area around Phoenix), but those days were now over. For the rest of my time in Arizona (six hellish summers) I would work outside every summer. The car wash summers were as bad as any, especially at the beginning when I was finishing cars out in the sun after they rolled off the conveyor. One team would wipe and dry the exterior, especially the windows, while another team tackled the inside of the windows and various inside surfaces like the dashboard and doors. The inside job was the worst and this was mostly performed by a bunch of Yaqui Indian girls, though I had to do it on occasion and hated it. Most of the workers were Yaquis living in this odd little slum community in the floodplain that I had never noticed before even though it was within a mile of both my house and my school. It was like they existed in a separate dimension.

My friend from high school, Dave, was the manager of the car wash but the owner, Russ, was often on hand to actually micro-manage everything. He had a temper.

I had always responded best to praise and there really had never been any reason for anyone to yell at me, but Russ yelled at everyone. Dave pointed out that Russ’s yelling often had nothing to do with you at all. This was a revelation to me. I wasn't used to being yelled at and tended to take it personally. That someone yelling at me really just meant he was having a bad day, not that I was a pathetic person, was a valuable lesson that paid dividends later in my life.

The yelling aside, I progressed to driving cars off the line and then to working the other end where you vacuum out the cars before driving them onto the line. For a long time I was the guy who drove the cars on since this is one of the more responsible positions. I sort of directed a team of two guys who vacuumed the back seat and passenger side while I did the driver’s side. This meant being able to drive virtually every vehicle on the road, automatic and manual. There were still Chryslers around at that point with push button transmissions. We even washed Scottsdale’s police cars, so that was fun.

Another thing I learned here was that some people are profoundly stupid. This degree of stupidity transcended the degree of dumbness I was already acquainted with. One of the guy on my crew was frequently angry simply because the world was so inexplicable to him. He could see that there were things that made sense to other people that were impenetrable to him. I treated him with kid gloves and hoped he would go away, which he soon did -- I don’t think he got along with Russ.

We also detailed cars, which involved steam cleaning engines and anything else especially dirty, sometimes re-painting engines and jacks and spares, using kerosene to clean tires and steel wool to polish chrome bumpers. I did all these jobs at one time or another. Working the steam gun and paint sprayer were always fun even in the heat. Russ was also a collector of Classic cars with a huge collection of beautiful automobiles many from the 1920s to 1940s. There was one, with bulletproof glass, that was supposed to have been owned by Hitler. Russ wouldn’t put these cars on the line but when it was quiet he would shuffle them in for semi-detailing just to keep us busy.

I finally ended up working out at the pumps. Cars would drive into the pump area and either get gas or just a wash ticket. (We still got some 1950s models with hidden gas tanks so you had to remember how to rotate the rear light -- or whatever -- to get to the tank). I had to write up the tickets and pump the gas. If it was busy I could be working four gas pumps at a time. It usually kept me occupied (which I had already learned was the secret to making the time pass), it also allowed me to work alone.

What I most remember about working there is coming home after a day toiling in the summer heat and spending the evening drinking anything liquid to get water back into my system. Also, I've had a fondness for the smell of gasoline ever since.