Carwash

The first automatic car wash in the country opened in Detroit in 1914, the first in Washington, DC opened in the spring of 1950 on Minnesota Ave in SE. Washington
A noticed was posted on the bulletin board in the administration building at Howard
offering weekend employment for student at 75 cents/hr.
A bunch of my buddies and I decided to hire on. It took two trolleys and one bus transfer to get there.
The interesting thing was that the only thing automatic was a moving chain with hooks that pulled the cars thru the building. We did the washing and drying by hand.
There were two favored jobs, being the drive on and drive off man and then there was the scrub crew of two and a rinse crew of two and a dry crew of two as the cars were pulled by. Each pair of us, vigorously scrubbing, spraying rinse water and towel drying an endless line of cars, for the princely sum of about 10 dollars a day
We started work at 6 AM and finished when it was too dark to see, about 12-14 hrs later. The owner provided a box of stale baloney sandwiches and some warm RC colas for lunch breaks. We were in constant motion and being young and silly clowned around to make the job fun.(shades of “Car Wash”, the movie, way before it existed). After about 4-6 weeks I got promoted to being the drive off man. This involved taking the car after it was unhooked and driving it out to the customer for their approval. If not satisfied, they could have it redone.
One day an old white man inspected his car and was not satisfied with some dirt between the car and the rear bumper. So I promptly drove the car around to be rewashed and hurried back to my post in the front to retrieve it. I politely asked if this was satisfactory and he said there was still dirt on the car. I asked him where and he said behind the bumper and I asked if he could get his hand in the space between the bumper and the car and he said ”no”…... I said “how in the hell do you think I can get my hand in there, you stupid mutha-fucker”
Guess what? I was fired on the spot. Didn’t like washing cars 14 hrs a day on weekends anyway! My boys left with me leaving a line of cars to be washed as we laughed all the way back to the campus.