The gas station squeegee

Between pumps six and seven, mounted to a post at hip height, sits the bucket, and in the bucket, angled toward the customer like an offered handshake, sits the squeegee. The water inside is grey by nine in the morning regardless of how recently it was changed, a color the accumulated windshield residue of an entire regional fleet produces with remarkable consistency. The sponge end goes in first, softening whatever a bird has recently left on a hood; the rubber blade follows, dragged corner to corner in the long diagonal stroke that every driver, independently and without instruction, seems to have learned from the same unnamed teacher. Municipal comparison is instructive. The station squeegee shares a family with the car wash version and the window washer's version on its long pole, but it alone is left unattended, unlocked, and free, which makes it the most democratic tool on the property. It is also the shortest lived: bristles fray, the rubber edge nicks on a stray staple or a bit of gravel tracked up from the lot, and within a season it streaks more than it clears. Stations replace them on no fixed schedule, which means the squeegee currently in service is either brand new or nearly retired, and there is rarely a way to tell which from across the lot.

Arthur Pell