On March 16th I closed on a 5 bay self service car wash located directly adjacent to my 100’ tunnel car wash. It took 3 contracts and 4 years to acquire this site. It’s a 25 year old SPECIALTY FUTRUA HP station with a new low pressure soap system. The income was either under reported or not reported at all which is why it took 3 contracts to get this wash. The owner was here on a green card from England, and after 911 was delayed 2 ½ years in getting his visa renewed. Having this business was his anchor to the US.
Orginally posted @ TALKCARWASH.COM and cross posted at STREEPROPHETS.COM
One big this that I noticed in 20 years of being in this town (other than it has it’s fair share of a$$holes), vagrants, dumpster divers and scrappers love self service car washes! This car wash was no different. Every day for the past 5 years I watched strange people over at that self service wash digging in trash cans, searching the bays for left quarters and prying the dumpster lids open with a long bar to get aluminum cans. 2 Christmas ago I was so concern when I saw a man eating out of the garbage can that I called the cops (to get housing... was going down to freezing that night) and took the guy over snacks from my vending machine. 5-6 X a day people on mopeds, old scrap trucks and bicycles would stop at the SS...... but no longer do they come. It’s like the frogs in Puerto Rico... silent.... The swallows no longer returning to San Juan Capistrano... or salmon not returning up stream.... The vagrants no longer come to the car wash.
It started off beguine, asking the scruffy old man in a white pickup not to pry open the dumpster on his search around town for aluminum cans. I never got his name before my wife irately ran him off the property... he sat in Burger King’s parking lot, like a vulture chased from it’s carrion feast! Oh yes when we would leave, he’d return to do his dirty deeds..... But that too has stopped. The little old lady on the blue moped also stopped coming, perhaps he quarter searches had not been so well these past 4 weeks that she moved on after years of blessings, like bison moving to greener pastures. I’ll miss her helmeted head and the little stick that she carried with her. And bicycle boy, the 30 something on a trike with advertisings for TNT WINDOW TINTING on his basket no longer stops by to eat the trash from the banquet feast provided by the discards of human activity. Only the crows remain to scavenge the cans, squirrels to roam the parking lot for lost French fries and blue jays protecting their turf. But the vagrants no longer come to the car wash.
There once was Walk’n Willie, a 50 year old dark skinned black man who roamed all over town asking for a quarter or some change to "buy so coffee". Willie, while intoxicated beyond reason always knew never to walk across the lot of this SS. The prior owner placed a trespass warrant against Willie to stop him for looking for food or asking customers for change of "coffee". I met Willie almost 20 years ago. He would from time to time stop at my house to ask for food. My wife would pack him a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, chips and a coke in a brown bag. Willie had legends told about him, urban legends of success as an accountant to the fall of a son in morning over the passing of his mother. One thing though is true, he wandered our streets for 20 years pandering for quarters to buy a quart. Willie would monthly get arrested to get "3 hots & a cot" and a fresh hair cut. I would run to him with some new clothes on a few rare occasions when I’d spot him with feces smeared on his pants. Willie was killed last year while walking on the side of the road..... Maybe to avoid walking across the parking lot of the self service car wash for fear of being yelled at.
Vagrants come to the car wash. "for my yoke is strong and my burden is weak".
For Willie