Making a Life, and a Living, from Rags and Turtle Wax

Making a Life, and a Living, from Rags and Turtle Wax

By COREY KILGANNON

Corey Kilgannon/The New York Times Robert Brown with the tools of his trade on West 126th Street.

William Brown, 50, has been washing cars from the same sidewalk spot in Harlem for the past eight years, armed with a dozen multi-colored rags, several spackle buckets and an assortment of waxes and cleansers.

Oh yes, and all the water he needs, courtesy of the fire hydrant next to which he bases his car-cleaning business, on West 126th Street just west of Morningside Avenue.

“By now everyone knows I wash here,” he said the other day. “It’s 10 bucks, and 15 for trucks – 20 bucks for a wash and wax.”

Mr. Brown said he is careful to use the absolute minimum amount of water — maybe a bucket or two per car.

He tucks his rags into the chain-link fence so they form a sort of linear headdress above him as he sits on one of his plastic buckets waiting for the next customer. He has two pairs of spiffy newish Nike basketball sneakers: one for washing with, the other for wearing home.

Most customers are locals or commuters who pass regularly. That and employees at the nearby post office leave him their cars with the keys, and trust him to find them a spot, no extra charge.

“I don’t even ask for a tip,” he said. “Hey we’re all struggling out here.”

He does some contractual work for the auto repair shop across the street, cleaning the just-repaired cars, he said, adding that, “In the winter, when you have water freezing on the car, they let me use their hot water.”

Mr. Brown is not a pitiable man, but he does have a hard-luck story. He was living at Broadway and 107th Street with his parents and working at Au Bon Pain at the World Trade Center, he said. His father passed away in 2000.

Then he escaped the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, but not without seeing the second plane hit, and people jumping from upper floors “like little rag dolls,” he said. His mother passed away that year too and he lost the family apartment.

With no job or home, he began living in the Charles H. Gay shelter on Wards Island for a year and worked in a McDonald’s. That did not work out, and he took up residency in an abandoned van next to the auto repair shop here on West 126th Street for three years.

He washed cars and helped out with odd jobs around the nearby Church of St. Joseph of the Holy Family, where nuns intervened and referred him to a local landlord who rented him a studio apartment nearby. Things keep getting better.

“I’ve always believed in working for a living,” Mr. Brown said. “Little by little, I’m pulling things back together.”