"I'm looking for a vacuum cleaner," I told the guy at Lowe's.

"What kind of vacuum cleaner?" he asked.

"I'm going to go home and clean up my car, so I reckon I need one that's best suited for that particular job," I replied.

He had yet another question: "How big a one do you need — how powerful?"

I thunk it over for a few seconds.

"Well," I said. "I want one that will suck the space station right out of the sky."

You see, I had made my mind up that I was going to clean up my car.

Not just clean it up. I was going to put on some old clothes, and maybe a football helmet and some shoulder pads and ATTACK IT with the vim and vigor of a medieval warrior going toe-to-claw with a vicious dragon.

You know how you will let your car go sometimes?

Oh, you don't do that. It's just me then?

OK.

Anyway, there were Burger King straws in the door pockets from, I think maybe the 1950s and there were items in the console that I had intended to throw out some time ago, like an Abba's Greatest Hits CD. You know how things just accumulate.

What brought me to this decision was that the air conditioner on my car went out a week or so ago.

I don't mean it "went out" like on a date or for ice cream. I mean it "went out" as in stopped working, went kaput, shut down, locked up, refused to blow cold air into the occupancy portion of the vehicle, which is something one really misses when it's 96 degrees outside and 140 degrees inside your car.

So I had to replace the air conditioner compressor in my car and it cost me $662.

And I have a rule. Any time I spend more than $500 on repairing a vehicle, I celebrate that expense in a suitable manner — this time the manner being that I would shine this car up so the rest of it would match the new and shiny $662 air conditioner compressor.

Now I'm the kid of guy who likes to be organized. For example, I make a list of things I will need when I set out to perform a task and I make sure all of the things I need are readily available and then I determine the best step-by-step method to achieve my intended objective.

And if I don't have all the materials I need to achieve the aforementioned objective, I will go to Wal-mart or any other kind of mart to find them and if I can't find them, I will order them from whatever source might be available to supply them.

Luckily in this case, I was able to, with the help of the good folks at Wal-mart and Lowe's, secure all the necessary items.

My list included:

— A vacuum cleaner strong enough to suck the Russian cosmonaut right off his lifeline tether during his space walk (see the previous reference to same);

— Window cleaner (and not just the regular stuff; the window cleaner they use on submarine periscopes);

— Bug and tar remover (I think the Department of Transportation, the City of Gaffney and the county of Cherokee should reimburse me for this item because it's their tar I'm having to remove from my vehicle; come to think of it, it's probably their bugs, too);

— Tire cleaner-shiner stuff (you know, the foamy goop that makes your tires look like they were just pulled out of the display window at the tire store and placed on your vehicle);

— Rags and brushes and sponges (let's face it, those ripped up old T-shirts are going to be only minimally effective; what you need here are the professional caliber items);

— Bumper sticker remover (this is a special kind of solvent that will take that nasty glue that sticks to your car when you peel off a bumper sticker);

— Some of that leather cleaner stuff that makes your leather smooth and slippery (I remember I used to have a car with a leather bench seat and I put this stuff on that seat and the first curve I went around, I slid all the way to the passenger side and — ZIP! — right out the open window and into the ditch along the roadside and the car kept going and ran over 16 mailboxes before it stopped — OK, I made that part up, but y'all know what I'm talking about, right?).

I might have left some things out but the main thing is that I had all the things I needed to do the job. So on Saturday I took my new vacuum cleaner and my box of cleaning goodies and I started tossing things out of my car and I started just a-spraying, and a-wiping, and avacuuming, and a-scrubbing, and a-working on that vehicle like a cyclone. I was all over that car like, as Cousin Eddie in Vacation would say, "flies on a rib roast."

And my wife looked out there and saw all the fun I was having and she couldn't resist joining in, so she came out and grabbed a rag and a bottle of spray stuff and pretty soon we looked like Larry and his brother Darryl and his other brother Darryl (from Newhart, remember?) without the second Darryl because, see, there was only two of us.

And several hours later, we had achieved the desired objective and the vehicle was all shiny and slippery and free of dust, pollen, gravel, tiny bits of leaves and agricultural material and any other kinds of pollutants.

Now me and my $662 air conditioner are both as cool as cool can be, I must say.

And somewhere up there in the space station, the Russian cosmonaut is looking through his ultra-powerful spy telescope at my shiny clean vehicle and he is so proud of us.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.