I just got my car cleaned at the most ghetto car wash.  If it weren’t for cars being dried there you would think it was out of business.  When you pull up, you see that the gas pumps are pulled out, just stubs left behind, not paved over.   In their place, scribbled in pen (not even a Sharpie) on a torn paper sign, “No Gas.”  The whole place is in disrepair, completely run down.  By the way, best car wash I’ve had in years.  The guys working there get in your car with cloths and spray bottles and really have a go.

While standing in the small building where I paid, basically the size of a tollbooth, I was flooded with memories of an old friend.  He lived in the alley right behind this car wash for at least thirty years.  I called him Charlie.  That’s what he told me his name was.  Others called him Pierre.   “Where is Charlie, the homeless dude?” I asked the curt woman as I handed my credit card over.  “You mean Pierre?”  “No, I mean Charlie — because I was friends with him and he told me his name was Charlie.   I know he told some people to call him Pierre.”  She said he moved a few years ago after a big health scare when neighbors and other fans in his hood rushed him to a hospital and he nearly died.  “After that, he moved to the Valley.”  The Valley??!!  I thought but didn’t say. (more…)