Ballad of Hollis Brown

As a result of living in an apartment I have had to "outsource" some of the tasks that I used to do myself. One of these is washing the car. There are no faucets outside of our apartment building. I have tried tackling the problem with buckets of water, but spent most of the time running up and down stairs. A hosepipe may be an option, but rigging it through our third-floor kitchen window does not seem that practical.

There is a carwash just around the corner from us. You must have seen one of these: you enter a tunnel at one end with a dirty car and exit at the other end with a squeaky clean one. As you enter "the tunnel" the machine starts with a low hum that quickly rises to a high pitched squeal. "Whoa-uh-eeh!". Then a cacophony of sounds kick in as over sized bottle brushes and jets of pressurized water start attacking the filth. At the same time it gets really dark as the car starts to rock sideways.

The last time I went to the carwash I was listening to Bob Dylan's third album, The Times They Are a-Changin'. I had just skipped to my favourite track, Ballad of Hollis Brown, when I entered "the tunnel". I don't know whether you have ever listened to some of Dylan's most haunting music while inside a tornado, but it scared the smithereens out of me! So run off people, and go have your cars washed! And don't forget your soundtracks.