Get Ready To Battle The Buick

Now that we’re well into summer, and we will all be outside on those glorious weekend afternoons, tooling around in our Porsches, or Jaguars, or (in my case) Ford Tempos, it is time for my invaluable instructions on how to wash your car.

This is very important for the beauty and upkeep of your vehicle, which by now is probably covered with one or more of the following harmful substances: sand, salt, dust, dirt, mud, grime, leaves, tree sap and - the scourge of drivers everywhere - bird poop.

And that’s just on the inside.

In order to make your car shine, or at least look like you don’t keep it in a gravel pit, you will need several useful items, including: a bucket, a sponge, soap, a hose, a raincoat, a chammy, car wax, a rag, sunglasses, suntan lotion, insect repellent, a vacuum cleaner, a window cleaner, archaeological equipment, a garbage bag, scuba gear, a tetanus shot and - this is extremely important - plenty of beer.

The first thing you should do is, of course, have a beer. This will energize you for the rigorous job ahead and will ensure that, if you miss a spot, you won’t care.

It is probably best to start on the inside of the car, which you will discover is, if possible, even dirtier than the outside. That’s because you have spent the fall and winter tracking in all kinds of messy stuff, some of which has been breeding under the seat and is very likely fatal to the touch.

Here is where the tetanus shot comes in handy.

Also in there, stuffed between the seats or under the mats, may be such items as missing gloves, missing homework, old grocery receipts, pens, gum wrappers, petrified candy, losing lottery tickets, a broken ice scraper, $1.50 in change and, just possibly, the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.

Whatever cannot be sucked up by a vacuum cleaner should either be thrown out or sent by overnight mail to the National Geographic Society.

Next you should clean the windshield and dust the dashboard, keeping in mind that you are required by federal law to:

(a) Bump your head.

(b) Scrape your shins.

(c) Smash your elbows.

To make sure you don’t die of heat prostration while you are inside the car, you should open the windows. Also, have another beer.

Now comes Part II: Washing and waxing the outside of the car.

The first thing you should do is hose down your vehicle. This loosens the dirt and makes it easier to wash off.

The second thing you should do is put on your scuba gear. That’s [because you forgot to close the windows, stupid.

While you are at it, you might as well put on insect repellent, which will keep away the swarms of bees, wasps, yellow jackets, mosquitoes, gnats and other flying creatures that will, as punishment for accidentally spraying their nests, try to eat you alive.

The real fun, however, comes in the actual washing. This not only requires enough “elbow grease” to induce cardiac arrest in a Clydesdale, but also makes you realize that your car has approximately 500 square feet of nooks, crannies and contours, all of them caked with dirt an inch thick.

The worst parts are the license plates, the hubcaps, the area around the tail-pipe, the narrow gap between the side-view mirror and the driver’sside door, all four door handles and, of course, the grille. Washing any of these areas can result in bruised, nicked or mangled fingers and, quite possibly, a string of invectives strong enough to make the neighbors go back inside and lock their doors.

The thing to remember is, no matter where you start - the front of your car or the back - you will end up hosing soapy dirt over an area you have already washed. This cannot be avoided. Just have another beer and forget about it.

This will help you with the next step, which is to get a chammy and wipe off your car, at which point you will discover, much to your delight, that some of the leaf stains and bird droppings are still there.

Not to worry. A healthy application of wax will take care of that. It should finish you off, too.

And when you are done, your car will shine gloriously, possibly for as long as eight minutes, whereupon one of two things will happen:

1. A bird will fly overhead.

2. It will rain.

Next time you might consider going to a car wash.]

MEMO: The text within the brackets, starting after the words “because you forgot to close the windows, stupid,” through the end of the story was omitted from the published version of the story.