We all know that person who’s always good for a story – the person who "should write a book someday."

For his friends, John C. Oliva was always that person. Throughout high school and college he worked at the family business, Speedee Car Wash, on 13th and Layton. It was an appendage of Oliva’s Garage, a business founded by his grandfather in 1968.

Spending his adolescence manning the self-service, heated indoor car wash provided Oliva with what he calls "his own little library" of unusual stories and anecdotes. A book-on-tape enthusiast, he was inspired to write down memories of his seven-year tenure at Speedee Car Wash after listening to "Waiter Rant," Steve Dublanica’s ode to food service.

"At first I was just doing it kind of entertainment for my family, a memento of our car wash days," he said. But it quickly turned into something more, and this year Orange Hat Publishing in Milwaukee released Oliva’s memoir "Washing Cars and Wasting Time: Misadventures at a Family-Run Car Wash."

The book captures life (and work) on Milwaukee’s South Side during the seven years Oliva spent at the car wash, selling Blue Shams for 50 cents, prank-calling the local pizza place, playing hockey with fellow employees during downtime, fielding customer complaints and thwarting the attempts of ne’er-do-wells who were trying to use slugs in the coin-operated machines.

"I would estimate that less than half of what went on there had anything to do with washing cars," Oliva tells OnMilwaukee.com.

As a Speedee employee, Oliva’s job description was all-encompassing, and his father’s expectations were high. He was obliged to do battle with the general public and defend corporate policies to the customers who demanded refunds or contrived genius strategies to side-step the stringent no-bucket rule.

He and his sister pushed countless hoop-dees out of the car washing stalls after their owners failed to realize that a good clean would kill the engine. He occasionally emptied the degreasing stall’s sewer basin. He combated boredom by sifting through the trash, encountering discarded cigarette butts, porn magazines ("They say there are some images that you cannot un-see"), deer carcasses and dirty diapers.

"I think the car wash really shaped my view of the world, for better or for worse," Oliva recalls. "I think up until working at the car wash, I had a naïve view…that in general people were nicer than they tend to be. I think you get that with any customer service job. There are a lot of crabby people out there that take the opportunity to kind of squash down the lowly people working in service jobs … because of it I treat people in those roles with a lot more respect because I was on the other side."

There’s always the risk with a memoir that the stories won’t be interesting taken out of context. But Oliva has deftly avoided such pitfalls with "Washing Cars and Wasting Time." The slim volume is a jovial account of dismal (but rewarding) grunt work and disastrous (but hilarious) encounters with the public that will delight anyone who has ever done a day of service work in their life – and anyone who has ever known and loved the South Side of Milwaukee.

Though he now lives in Michigan, he still holds a special place in his heart for the Speedee Car Wash, and the neighborhood that served as a backdrop to all those memories.

"When you’re there (in Milwaukee) you don’t really appreciate it for what it is," he says. "But when I come back I do see how unique the South Side of Milwaukee is. I think that it does kind of have an Old World feel to it. There seems to be a lot of smaller businesses, mom-and-pop type operations on the South Side you don’t get elsewhere in the country … you have the Hispanic bakeries or the old Polish bakeries or Italian delis or things like that that I don’t see here in Michigan."

Oliva’s father, also named John (often referred to by friends and clients as The Bearded Wonder or That Homeless Lookin’ Guy) was – and is – a no-nonsense entrepreneur whose motley crew of employees included his son, his daughter Jenni (who kept up with the boys) and nephew Scott (to whom the book is dedicated).

"We really were kind of the family-run business that you always hear about," recalls Oliva. "We were tied to the business for all the good and all the bad that came along with that … My sister and I used to always kid when we were young that my mom seems to be able to work that into a conversation within the first 30 seconds of bumping into somebody at a store – ‘Oh, we own Speedee Car Wash on 13th and Layton.’"

In the book, Oliva’s father looms large even in the anecdotes of which he is not a part. His resourcefulness and dedication go hand-in-hand with his refreshing, South Side-bred bluntness, well-known both to his clientele and to his employees.

"Whereas many businesses trumpet the credo ‘The customer is always right,’ Dad’s philosophy was more along the lines of ‘The customer is usually wrong. If somebody doesn’t like something here, blow their ass out the back door and tell them that Super Wash is one 27th Street,’" Oliva writes.

Now almost 65 years old, Oliva’s dad still operates Oliva’s Garage (Speedee Car Wash closed in 1998). In addition, he cares for his ailing wife, who was also actively involved in the business and kept the books. He proudly sells copies of his son’s memoir in his business and has been known to read passages from the book aloud at family gatherings.

"He’s as full of as much piss and vinegar – as he would say – as he’s ever been," Oliva laughs.

Since hanging up his car wash uniform, Oliva has earned his Ph.D. and now works as an engineer. It’s a serious step up in life from washing cars, but he writes in the book that the most valuable lesson of the job – and his father – was that you can never judge a person based on their income or profession.

"I think that after years of watching (my father) interact with people, I have found that he has more of a Robin Hood-like approach to the public," Oliva writes. "(The powerful) came to our business and expected us to bow down to their stature just like much of the rest of society did. Dad was there to remind them that, at least in that one building, he was in charge, and they were going to play by his rules."

"Washing Cars and Wasting Time" is available on Amazon.com.