Sunshine Arouses Clean-Car Passions
Elaine Jacobsen hated the chore, but the time had come.
The sun was finally peaking out from behind the fluffy gray, and its rays had sprung the road silt loose from the snow.
The weekend meant car-wash time.
Jacobsen does this herself only when the seasons change.
“I don’t have to,” she said, looking up from her soiled upholstery, coin-operated vacuum in hand. “My boyfriend usually does it.”
The 23-year-old wasn’t alone in her soapy chore. For the folks at the S&A Car Wash at Sprague and Adams, the spring thaw is the busiest time of year. People who hardly ever wash their cars wash them in March. In the summer, they stay clean. In winter, drivers don’t seem to care.
Employee Merrill Taggart stood at the ready at the drive-through bay, scrub brush in hand. “In the summer, 30 to 50 cars is a good day. Now, it’s 120 to 170.”
His co-worker Casey Boyd, all goatee and khaki baseball cap, nodded in breathless agreement. “It’s been one good month,” the 20-year-old said.
The lemon smell of liquid car wax wafted from bay to bay, and sometimes the misty spray was blown outside and back onto cars people were trying to dry.
A small line of people waited at the change machine, fumbling with dollar bills that were too wrinkled. Some folks waited bumper-to-bumper to enter the drive-through bay. Taggart and Boyd gave their wheels a good brush scrub before each car rolled into the big spray chamber.
Karl Speltz sat waiting for the car in front of him to emerge dripping with clean. Speltz said he just didn’t have time to wash it any other way. And he had a tie on, after all.
Most customers, though, chose to do the honors themselves. Even out of those, two groups emerge: The Pink Brushers and White Washers. See, the Pink folks use the foaming brush, which slathers their cars with pastel goo. White Washers use the spray gun only, spewing normal suds everywhere.
Whichever method Jug Jurgenson used, it worked. His jacked-up, dark-blue ‘89 Ford Ranger looked sharp. It was the first time it had been washed in months, but he was thinking of selling it now.
Another truck guy, this one with big black Chevy, couldn’t talk long. “I’m still on the clock at work,” he said.
Down at the vacuums, Denise Elder was steaming mad at dirt. She just got done vacuuming her forest-green Saturn, but hadn’t washed it yet. And she wasn’t going to, at least not there.
“I just like to wash it at home,” she said. She would have vacuumed it at home, too, but someone changed her plans.
“My husband has the wet vac,” Elder said.
It sounds like Jacobsen had better start sharing some of her significantother maintenance tips. She gets her guy to wash the car every few weeks during summer.
But she was a little tight-lipped - she had 50 cents on the line.
“I’d talk … but this costs money,” Jacobsen said, trying to outrace the vacuum’s timer.
, DataTimes MEMO: Valley Snapshots is a regular Valley Voice feature that visits gatherings in the Valley. If you know of a good subject for this column, please call reporter Ward Sanderson at 927-2154.