Saturday's Storyteller: Abandoned Car Wash
Abandoned Car Wash by Belinda Roddie It's seven o'clock on a Monday night, and the place is dead. It's always dead. Sure, some cars whiz by from time to time, always heading east to a baseball game or west to an all-you-can-eat buffet on its last economically sound legs. But the drivers never stop here. No one's around to wash their beaten-up jalopies, anyway. Even five years after it closed, Old Ben's Car Wash still smells like bleach. The strong kind, too - not the flowery detergent type that makes all your laundry as fragrant as a middle-aged lady's rose garden. I'm talking about formaldehyde-level bleach, the kind you use when you need to clean up secrets. The pungent odor gets in your nose, and it burns, like every hair in your nostrils is set on fire. The inside of the car wash is gutted, but the whole area still smells like it's been embalmed and preserved. Like a plaster and steel mummy. Old Ben's Car Wash used to have a staff of thirt