going to town

My friend Joyce laughs whenever I tell her I am putting on my big-boy pants to go to town.

With all of the weight I have put on, "big boy" may have a completely different meaning than what I intend. Whenever I go to a larger city, I prefer to dress as an adult rather than in my pre-school clothes -- the outfits we northerners tend to wear around town that give casual a questionable name.

Other than going to church, I have not put on a pair of Dockers for months. The primary reason is that in Mexico I have not ventured past the city limits of Cihuatlán since at least October. Or, it seems that long.

Yesterday I broke my surly bonds and headed down the road to Manzanillo. I had no choice. My six trips to Oregon since August have left me with a pile of dry cleaning that needed tending to. And, since the nearest dry cleaner is in Manzanillo, I took my Hobson's choice.

I am not fond of the drive to the Big M, and I am not certain why. It is only a 26-mile drive. Admittedly, the main highway that takes me there is two lanes with limited shoulders in places. And there is always a potpourri of vehicles with varying driving speeds. The scenery is always pleasant. I can easily leave my house in Barra de Navidad and arrive at the dry cleaner in 30 minutes.

Even though my sole purpose for the trip was to drop off my dry cleaning before I head north again, I decided to stop at La Comer and Sam's Club. The Sam's Club stop was for the industrial-sized cleaning materials Dora needs to keep my mini-hotel high on the Trip Advisor list. But the stop at La Comer had an entirely different purpose.

When I moved to Mexico in 2009, there were three large grocery stores on the west end of Manzanillo: Soriana, Comercial Mexicana (whose name changed to La Comer when the Soriana organization purchased it), and Walmart. I thought that I would end up spending a good deal of time shopping for groceries there when I would make the weekly trip to pick up my mail. Probably because they looked like Safeway stores in the 1950s -- lots of merchandise on offer in a utilitarian fashion.

But that is not what happened. I quickly discovered that I could save myself a trip to Manzanillo for grocery shopping when I discovered the combination of Hawaii and the corner abarrotes could provide me with everything I needed. (The mail drop was replaced by a postal box in San Patricio.) 

My grocery stops in Manzanillo were reduced to my twice-a-year trip to the city. La Comer was always on the list because it is in the same mall as my optician.

A lot of us wondered what Soriana would do with Comercial Mexicana when it bought the chain in 2016. For a long time, nothing happened other than the name change to the slightly-swanky La Comer -- best pronounced with one's nose squeezed tight. The same way the English pronounce "croissant."

Then the big changes started in the summer of 2020. The store was kept open while the interior was essentially gutted and re-worked in stages. When I was last in the store in October, it was still a construction site.

Joyce told me in December that the new construction was complete and the store looked fantastic. (She is particularly fond of here superlatives.) When I stopped yesterday, I discovered for myself that she was correct. The place was as bright and modern as any supermarket north of the border -- luring customers to sample its wares.

I wandered over to the pasta section and was surprised to see La Comer carries my favorite brand -- Rummo. The usual shapes are there, including bucatini.

Bucatini is my gold standard to test the availability of good pasta. Most Oregon supermarkets flunk the test. La Comer, on the other hand, offers it from three different makers. The transformation is complete. (Alex at Hawaii regularly sells bucatini.)

For me, La Comer is symbolic of Mexico's economic development. Grocery stores of this type are not built for northern tourists. They are built for middle-class Mexicans to spend their excess income on what they see as a better style of life.

And, just as I discovered that Hawaii and the local abarrotes could meet my grocery-shopping needs, the appearance of high-end grocery stores are no more a threat to "authentic" Mexico (whatever that is) than building wider roads. It is part of the economic process of Mexico growing into its place as the 11th richest economy in the world.

I guess all of that is worth putting on my big-boy pants.