My Father’s Terrible Chamois

"hillrat" (hillrat) 06/08/2020 at 09:04 • Filed to: Chamois

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From the time I was 12 years old until I stopped living at home, one of my jobs was to wash the cars on Saturday morning. It was an elaborate ritual constructed by my father that had to be adhered to precisely.

You start by taking out all the floor mats, then clean the interior windows, and work your way down through the rest of the interior. Wiping the dash, emptying the trash/ashtray, and finally vacuuming. After scrubbing the white walls with a brillo pad and doing the rest of the exterior I had to dry the car with my Dad’s Jurassic chamois.

This chamois was crusty and old when I started washing the car and stayed that way over the next dozen or so years that my old man had me washing his cars for him. The first time I tried to use the chamois it went from bone dry and pushing water around, to sopping wet and pushing water around with no intermediate stop.

In the fullness of time I learned how to get it a little wet to start and get some kind of drying action out of it, but I still spent most of my time wringing the chamois out to get it dry enough to dry the car off. It worked but definitely not as advertised and sometimes when I dried off our old hoopty I said fuck it to the chamois and used an old towel that didn’t seem to work any worse in my estimation.

It was a beautiful day on Saturday and, since you’re not really supposed to be going places but can hang out with select people so long as you can keep your distance, one of my buddies came over to wash his car since I was doing mine and I have a driveway and he doesn’t. Every time I’ve ever borrowed his car it’s been filthy because his family disrespects his whip (just like mine does) and I always return it to him clean because that’s what decent humans do. So we get done doing the exterior of his car, I bust out this new chamois, and OMGWTFBBQ it was like magic!!!

It was unreal how well this thing worked, I couldn’t believe it. In total contrast to my previous experience with a chamois, this thing didn’t need to be wrung out all that much, and didn’t seem to hold much water but still left behind a perfectly dried and polished exterior wherever it touched. I’m in awe of the drying power of a new chamois. I’m excited to wash my car again just so I can dry it off with this chamois, seriously.

This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: > hillrat 06/08/2020 at 09:11

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SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > hillrat 06/08/2020 at 09:12

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What have you done?

smobgirl > hillrat 06/08/2020 at 09:20

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The thing I most remember about washing the family car as a kid is that I was always assigned to do the inside of the windows. As it turned  out, you got wetter doing that when the outside is being sprayed off than the people washing the outside got. Cars of the 70s weren’t well sealed.

facw > hillrat 06/08/2020 at 09:26

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Could be worse, you could be dealing with a cycling chamois...

ranwhenparked > smobgirl 06/08/2020 at 09:27

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The thing I remember is my dad deciding that special car soap was a big scam, and dish soap was perfectly fine, our cars were always scrubbed down with Dawn and never waxed, because the latter wss a waste of time.

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > facw 06/08/2020 at 09:44

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I can do sick skidz !

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ranwhenparked 06/08/2020 at 10:39

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LOL - I use Woolite. =)

bmil128 > hillrat 06/09/2020 at 00:37

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I remember getting my first car (‘88 V6 Camaro) and my dad forcing me to buy this instead of a real chamois. It was not exactly the same.