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.