By Joe Walker
“Does General Motors make bathtubs?”
Summer is the season to be seen. People want to show off their wedding rings, chiseled bodies, maybe a $200 hair-do, new outfits and, of course, automobiles. They shine them up good to go rolling through the neighborhood, driving two-miles-per-hour so everyone sees them (Or 200MPH so police can’t catch them). Whatever speed, you want your whip looking right all the time. This requires you to wash your vehicle … all the time. Whether you own a Grand Cherokee or a Gremlin, getting that sucker show-worthy takes a big chunk of your day.
If you go to the automatic drive-thru carwash you first have to wait in a long line. Next you deal with trying to get your change after paying. Drive-thru carwashes never have change; the attendants never know how to work the register. Then your car comes out and it’s not really clean. You may even have a scratch on it. But their machine didn’t do it … It must’ve been scratched already. Now you have to start beating people up. Time wasted.
If you visit the spray wash you’ll wait, what seems, forever for an open stall. Then you have to get quarters. The change machines take 1’s, 5’s and 10’s. You have a twenty so you leave to get change. You return to someone in your stall. You wait. You rinse; then add quarters. You wash the sides; add quarters. Wash the front and back; add more quarters. You wash the top then start to rinse; add quarters. Every two to three minutes you’re adding quarters. You finish rinsing then realize you missed the tires. You have no more quarters, no towels to dry your car. Time wasted.
Your next option is the hurry-up hand wash guys or the extra-thorough hand wash guys. So you’ll either be fighting again or waiting until Christmas.
Do-it-yourself is last. We all know how long this takes. Get the hose, a bucket, towels, soap, tire wet, scrub brush, wax, Armor All; you get sweaty and nasty just to wash your ride, and now you need a bath. Once you’re done, you don’t want to go anywhere!
