Consumer addiction to plastic bags and other disposable stuff is rapidly going out of fashion in many parts of Mexico. The current trend brings to mind the common shopping practices that were followed when I first put foot down at Lakeside in the early 1970’s.

Back then, my late husband and I often supplied our larder from a small family store set just across the street from the funky house we occupied in the Seis Esquinas neighborhood. Carmen, the proprietress, would scoop up our requested measures of dry beans, rice, baking flour, oatmeal or sugar and package them neatly into cones she made out of discarded newspaper pages.

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