no laundry day

If you cannot deal with change, Mexico is not your country. My sleepy little burg is no exception.

For the past several years (long enough for me to forget just how long), I have used the same laundress in Villa Obregón to clean my sheets, towels, and undies. Trini did such a good job, I continued using her services when I moved to Barra de Navidad.

Every Wednesday, I would drive three miles to drop off two pillow cases filled with soiled clothing. The same afternoon, I would pick it up cleaned, folded, and smelling as if it had spent a week at a spa specializing in harvesting lavender.

But, no more. Trini told me three weeks ago, she would be shuttering her business. Permanently. She had suffered a series of washing machine failures, and was down to one operating machine. When the flocks of northern tourists started arriving, she was going to close her doors.

I had hoped to eke out one last load of clean clothes this week. But that did not happen. Her doors are down.

Running a small business anywhere is tough. But, in our villages, where tourist pesos and dollars oil the commercial machinery, the revenue stream is either a trickle or a flood. Most of the time, it is a trickle.

Revenue tends to turn solely into income without any investment in capitalization -- a certain recipe for a shortened business life. When machines die, there is seldom a means to repair them.

That is one reason buildings here are adorned for services that have not been available since the Salinas administration.

I suspect Trini will enjoy the respite. The laundry business has not been a good partner for her recent health.

And me? I need to find a good laundress who knows how to make sweat socks smell as if they just walked in from Provence.