The chore that I hate the most!

Cleaning the inside of my car is not my favourite chore, okay it's my least favourite chore. I would rather do anything else than clean the inside of my car.

Today I spent a frustrating hour contorting my body to scour out some of Sparky’s accumulated dog hair from under the dash, on the floor mats, and under or between the seats. I scrubbed at pawprints, and vacuumed up some of the sand and gravel that he tracked inside my pretty blue Mazda 3. 

And that got me to thinking about the cars of my childhood. When I was a little kid, Dad owned a 1950 beige serviceable Ford, it might have been a Customline Ford. It was a functional vehicle barely big enough for two adults, four growing daughters and the family dog. 

We as kids were frequently assigned the job of washing the car and cleaning the windows inside and out. I don't remember my mother owning a vacuum until the mid to late fifties. Yes, the car was Dad’s and the vacuum was Mom’s. It was the 1950’s. 

So, how did we clean the inside of the car? Think about it. Two adults who smoked in the vehicle with the windows rolled up. Four messy noisy kids. And a farty Cocker Spaniel who shed, a lot. 

Somewhere in the late 1950’s Mom eventually got a big awkward Hoover Constellation vacuum, but the back alley where we cleaned the family automobile didn’t have electricity so vacuuming the inside would have been impossible. In 1955 Dad was able to upgrade to a maroon-coloured two-door 1955 Oldsmobile Super-88. He was pretty darn proud of that car. 

I remember one Saturday morning when dad told us to wash and wax The Oldsmobile. We very industriously applied wax to the entire vehicle, only to discover that was the worst possible scenario. The particular type of wax that we were given was to be applied in small areas, and then buffed off as soon as the surface clouded. We scrubbed furiously at the hard wax in hopes of removing it before Dad discovered our mistake. 

Yeah, no such luck. He was less than impressed when he had to apply his muscles to remove the mess. 

Our next family automobile was a smaller sportier one, a Mercury Meteor. There were only two of the four daughters at home by that time, plus another family dog who also shed, a lot more than the Cocker Spaniel. The Mercury Meteor didn’t last long because dad was long-legged and the car was too small. 

The final family car was a big, long, boat of a thing, a copper-coloured 1967 Dodge Monaco. And we still had the big white dog who shed an amazing about of fur, and who went with us whenever possible. 

 

Our driveway didn’t have an electrical outlet and I am pretty sure Dad wouldn’t have spent money on someone else cleaning his car, when he had two healthy, strong teenage daughters living at home. 

I’ve driven and owned a wild assortment of vehicles since I became a licenced driver those many, many years ago; everything from two-hundred-dollar junker, to this 1915 Overland delivery truck, to an expensive Aston Martin. 

I love the freedom of owning a car. 

I just hate to clean the inside.

Cheers, Lynda and The Mucky Sparkinator