Can You Hear Me Now?

Gail:

4:30 AM. We are jolted from sleep by the ringing phone. It’s the cordless handset that alerts us to an incoming SKYPE internet call. Instantly awake, we rush to the computer. The number on the screen calms fears, brings annoyance. It’s not family, it’s a long-time customer with equipment problems calling Bill.

When we first came to San Pancho nearly ten years ago, there were only a handful of public telephones scattered around the pueblo. Armed with a stack of phone cards, I would walk from one to the other to find the shortest line. It took two phone cards and a long series of numbers to execute one call. Under pressure, I would inevitably misdial and have to start again. The polite coughs and shuffling feet behind me felt like signs of impatience and that did not make it easier.

Carolyn:

You had it easy, Gail. When we got her fifteen years ago there were two phones and a fax machine in a little hole-in-the-wall a block from the beach. One of the old families was running the business, and it was a life saver. There was a chalk board mounted on the outside wall where your name appeared when you had a fax. If you were awaiting important news you’d be down there every few minutes until your fax arrived.

My husband was trying to have it both ways, keep a software writing job and come to Mexico too. He would take his laptop to the little office and plug it into a phone to download his email. One day, the download went on until his bill was up to 200 pesos (when 200 pesos was real money) and he had to quit. The next, he drove into Vallarta in search of a faster download--no, internet cafes used phone lines there, too, and though they didn’t charge 10 pesos a minute as in San Pancho, the email was still taking too long to come through.

Gail:

Then you understand how excited we were in 2004 when we our house was completed and we could apply for a private line.
“We’re very sorry. No more phone lines are available in San Pancho,” Telmex said. They would put us on the wait list. But the number of people wanting phones had exploded and we ended up waiting two years. The good news was that, by then, we could get broadband, too.

Carolyn:

That was rough. We got our phone when the first twenty private lines were offered, but we were on dial up for a long time.

Gail:

Then SKYPE! We loved it! Then a cell phone tower! Ten year olds in the pueblo had cell phones. Soon we did, too.

Emails—we get lots of them. Many promise eternal happiness if we forward same to 50 of our closest friends and every on-line purchase results in special offers. But my sister gets in touch every morning and we can stay close to family and friends. We pay our bills and read the newspapers on-line, too.

SKYPE calls—we get a lot of them too. Bill’s customers want him to fix their problems. Our sons call with questions about air conditioners and water filtration systems, or when the keys are locked inside the car in a snowstorm. But they also call to check in, to share good news, and to ask Bill for his coconut shrimp recipe.

By the way, Carolyn, did you ever find out what was in that email?

Carolyn:

It turned out to be a video clip of a rhinoceros trying to copulate with a very attractive Volvo.

A Stitch in Time

The sudden scream pierced my pleasant siesta. The sound was akin to an angry cat in the throes of comeuppance. I made my way from bedroom to laundry bodega, the apparent source of the high-pitch caterwaul. By the time I reached the washing machine sound had met fury: my fine, albeit rusted, Bosch thumped and shimmied a kind of tarantella across the brick bodega floor.

Load must be unbalanced, I thought. I stabbed the off button.

"What’s the problem?" The commotion had roused my husband, Win, from one of his fix-it projects.

"I’ll take care of it," I said. I stuck my hand in the belly of the Bosch, scrunched wet towels.

"I don’t think so. Smell it."

Burnt rubber. Uh-oh.

Win pulled the machine out of the bodega into the adjacent courtyard, removed its metal back plate.

"Bad news. It’s the belt. Snapped in two." He scrutinized the frayed ends. "Don’t know where we can find a belt to fit a Bosch."

"We’ll have to buy a new machine," I said. I ticked off the names of likely retailers: Costco, Wal-Mart, Tio Sam…"I can be ready to go in ten minutes…"

"Not so fast," said Win. He ran his finger over the tear, turned the busted belt this way and that.

"But we have company coming! We need to wash sheets, towels…we have four days before…"

"You can go to the river," said Win.

I think he was kidding.

During the next 48 hours Win focused on fixing the belt. First he knit the ends together with wire. But it snapped on the test spin. He then tried glue. Three tubes later, Win looked for another solution. The remedial attempts had truncated the belt; it was now too short to fit the machine. He looked around for material to elongate the belt as well as make it stronger. Here is what he applied with silicone: strands of webbing from a disintegrating lounge chair, a few inches of leather from the back of an equipal sofa, the strap from his rubber flip-flops.

Eureka! On a slow motion spin the belt held. But Win was worried. "It will break again. And when it does I don’t think I will be able to fix it."

We tried local hardware stores first. No belts. Perhaps one could be ordered?

I nearly wailed…no time…three days…laundry…guests...

The manager at Amutio, a major hardware store in Mezcales, did not have a belt either but intrigued with our problem flipped through a phone book for a likely retailer.

The shop he suggested was located on an unmarked street in nearby Bucerias. It did not carry a name either but the several washing machines in various states of deshabille stacked in the front yard were calling card enough. The woman behind the counter took a look at the old belt Win had stapled and glued then shook her head. She rooted around in the back of the shop, said she couldn’t find anything similar. She pointed to the layers of webbing and leather and rubber. Win laughed, explained his fix-it job. She returned to the back of the shop. The belt she eventually brought us was perfect. We took it home. It worked.

There is a moral to this small story. It touches on disposable societies up north and resourceful societies down south. While this gringa is still quick to toss the broken and buy the new, my husband has learned, by observation and osmosis, to do what our Mexican neighbors do: repair with materials at hand.

So we keep the patched up version of the Bosch belt. It could be useful for parts when and if the new belt breaks.