Al and Jane Howard and Antonio Garcia

If you pass the E-Z Clean Car Wash on Monterey Street between First and Leavesley, you may have noticed that the sign in front doesn’t offer your run-of-the-mill advertising. Instead, car wash owners Al and Jane Howard and their manager, Antonio Garcia, use the sign to post words of wisdom, relevant quotes from famous people or messages that lift the spirits of passersby.

Patch: You could use the letter board in front of the car wash to advertise, but you don’t. Instead, every week there’s a new quote. I find myself going out of my way to see what the sign says. How long have you been doing this?

Al Howard: About fourteen years ago, Jane and I saw a message board in front of a church in Santa Cruz. It didn’t say anything religious or political. It just had a quote that both of us liked. We decided that we could do the same thing with the board in front of the car wash.

Jane Howard: It’s a different approach. We wanted to use the sign in a way that engaged the community.

Patch: Do people comment on the sign?

Antonio Garcia: All the time. People stop and tell us how much they like the sign or they’ll pull over and take a picture with their cell phone.

Patch: You change the sign every week?

Al: Yes, we try to come up with a new message every week.

Patch: How do you find the quotes?

Jane: We all find quotes in different ways. I have a book of quotations that I like to look through.

Al: Antonio reads self-help books and he finds a lot of the quotes in his books.

Jane: We can always tell when Antonio is reading a new self-help book because he’ll have four or five new quotes ready.

 Al: We also keep a bowl; we’ll toss in quotes that we like and go through it every six months or so to find ones that work.

Antonio: We sometimes find good quotes but can’t use them because we don’t have enough room on the sign.

Patch: So when you find a new quote the first thing you do is….

Antonio: Count the letters.

Al: There’s a limit to how many letters you can fit on one line.

Patch: If you don’t have enough room the quote is a no-go.

Antonio: Right.

Patch: You work as a team in deciding which quote goes on the board each week?

Al: We do. We will run the quotes by each other to make sure all of us agree with them. We don’t want to use the board for political messages and we don’t want to stir up controversy.

Patch: Have some quotes caused controversy?

Al: Well, the closest I’ve gotten to a political message was when I put “Taxes are a punishment for success” up on the board. That one earned me a few comments. At the time Jane was on the school board and one of the other school board members told me that taxes were necessary for education, which of course they are.

Jane (shaking her head): I tend to like creative, humorous messages. Antonio chooses deeper, more thought-provoking messages.

Patch: And Al comes up with the controversial messages?

Jane and Antonio (both nodding in agreement): Yes.

Antonio: If you put up a political message, then people have to choose a side.

Jane: We don’t want that.

Al nods in agreement: No, we really don’t.

Jane: We want the messages to focus not on what people lack or what divides us, but on what can makes each of us a little better, and creates a stronger community.

Patch: That’s a lot to ask of a car wash sign.

Al: It is, but we like to aim high.

Jane: It’s a small thing but a large number of people see the message every week.

Patch: Do you ever use the sign to advertise?

Jane: We rarely use it to advertise our business but we do use it for community service. We support the Gilroy High School cheerleaders and when they have their Fourth of July Fireworks booth here every year, we use the sign to advertise for them. I’d like to point out that they have been the top-selling fireworks booth in Gilroy for the past few years.

Patch: That has nothing to do with pretty girls waving poms-poms.

Jane (laughing): I’m sure that’s part of it, but it’s also a very good location.

Al: And it is funny to watch the high-school boys driving by when the cheerleaders are here. There’ll be four kids in a car, the driver cruising about as slowly as a teenage boy can drive while the rest lean out their windows.

Jane: We also post ads for charities like the animal shelter in San Martin. We’re big animal lovers.

Patch: Thus the dog wash at the front of the car wash. Do the dogs like it?

Jane: I don’t know if the dogs like it but their owners do. We post messages during the Garlic Festival every year, too.

Patch: What kind of messages?

Al: “Welcome Gilroy Garlic Festival Visitors.” We also use the sign to announce events like the Wine Stroll. I love that one. Where else can you walk down the main street in a town and see the mayor strolling by with his glass of wine.

Jane: The car wash technically isn’t downtown – we’re considered the gateway to downtown – but we like to think of ourselves as part of downtown Gilroy.

Patch: Antonio, what’s been your favorite message that you’ve posted?

Antonio: “Imagination is intelligence having fun.”

Patch: George Scialabba.

Al: Antonio is very well-read; he reads all the time. He is in school right now. Part of the curriculum there is business ethics, and I look up to him for that. Not many business owners, directors, or CEOs think about ethics these days.

Jane: I think ethics means treating people well, and doing what’s right.

Al: I believe if you treat people well, they treat you well. If you’re rough on the people who work with you, it comes back to you. This holds true no matter how big your company. When we owned a tire business we had more than one hundred people working for us. Today, our business is smaller but the same principles apply.

Patch: How long ago did you move to Gilroy?

Al: Thirty-one years ago. There are a lot more people here now but it’s still the best place to live.

Patch: Al, what is your favorite quote?

Al: One that I like is short but memorable. I know Winston Churchill said it but I think it was originally from Horace Greeley: “Common sense is very uncommon.” Has that appeared on the board?

Antonio (nodding): It has.

Patch: Jane, what’s your favorite quote?

Jane: One of my favorites is from Thomas Edison: “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

Al: We also like one by Michael Vance: “Innovation is the creation of the new or the rearranging of the old in a new way.”

Patch: Ah. One example of innovation then, would be using a letterboard at a car wash to convey encouraging words to your community at large.

Al: I guess that’s true. 

See the sign at E-Z Clean Car Wash, 7940 Monterey Street, near Leavesley.