STORY BEHIND THE POEM CAR WASH
.
Dave Krenz hates the smell of cigarette
smoke, especially stale smoke left in a car that he has to drive. He works
what we call the Alpha shift, which is a permanent dayshift that starts
at 5 am (0500 hrs) and finishes at 4pm (1600 hrs).
.
Anyway, he got into a brand new 1997
Ford Crown Victoria, and immediately he could smell that awful smell. He
went down to Cambie Yards, which is the fuel station, mechanics, etc for
Vancouver City. When he arrived he thought that he would run it through
the car wash as well and have a clean unit in and out.
.
There is some controversy into what
happened next. Dave claims the lot attendant started the wash rack, the
lot attendant claims Dave did. No matter, it was what happened next which
caused the poem and the subject of a lot of giggling.
.
The rack moved forward as usual, and
Dave was sitting in the car. For some reason, lets say a "technical difficulty",
the water was not spraying from the jets as usual. Compounding that is
that the roller brush was not lifting either. I was told once that it was
the water pressure that helped it lift.
.
Anyway, it didn't. It just kept coming
forward until it hit the windshield. Sort of the irresistible force meets
the immovable object problem. Unfortunately, the weak point was the windshield
which let go with almost explosive results. The entire interior of the
car was sprayed with glass fragments. Dave was thankfully uninjured and
got himself another patrol car, not one of the shiny new ones though.
.
It reminded me of the time Art
Chinn was on his motorcycle and got run over by a street sweeper, but,
that’s a whole 'nother story…
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