Here There and Everywhere

The ’50’s Automatic Car Wash

Not too far from where we will live is this old fashioned car-wash, with all these car washing machines.

It costs $5.00. That is it. No additional taxes, it is all included. You can get the fancier treatments, but I just needed to get the pollen and sap off my new car. Within seconds, I was in, and finished.

It could make you a little claustrophobic (well, it makes me just a little claustrophobic) because you have NO control! You have to keep your hand off the steering wheel and your foot off the brake! You just sit there while water shoots from different directions, and then you are covered with soap suds and you cannot see a thing except the lights from the car in front of you, oh no!

And then huge gusts of wind and it is over except for the optional – and free – vacuums you can use to clean out the car interior.

My car looked like new! I think me and the 50’s car wash are going to be good friends.

It does remind me of the automatic car wash we used to visit in Saudi Arabia. In a country where labor is cheap and the harshness of the weather and climate makes specialized machinery hard to maintain, things happen. We don’t know if the machines broke and couldn’t be fixed or whether they were sabotaged, but while it was billed as an “automatic” car wash, it was this thing where the car got on tracks but while water squirted and suds squirted, there were people, not brushes, with rags and towels, washing, drying, spraying, scrubbing and finally buffing. The end result was the same, but people, not machines, did the work.

April 14, 2010 - Posted by intlxpatr | Adventure, Cultural, Customer Service, ExPat Life, Financial Issues, Humor, Living Conditions, Local Lore, Pensacola, Saudi Arabia, Technical Issue