The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The Mabana Sunset Villa was originally a sort of low end Dry Out facility, mostly aging alcoholics but later everything from meth to heroin. The fact that they were fairly inexpensive kept them at full occupancy for decades, but when ownership changed hands and the new folks thought they could double profits without changing services — in fact, maybe eliminate a few, everything from staff to cable TV to the quality of the food — well, maybe that works in Seattle and Gomorrah, but up here in the boondocks, setting up a rehab clinic that mimicked a penitentiary, not so much, not when half the inmates, I mean residents, know exactly what a prison looks like from the inside.

When the recidivism went through the roof and half the residents were selling drugs in the recreation room ( a few chairs and a card table plus a filthy aquarium) after hours, a de facto happy hour of their own, well, the Villa lost referrals and profits went more southerly than the South End and eventually the place was sold for less than the last entrepreneur had paid five years earlier. So much for South End dreams of fast riches!

The Villa, once a hotel serving Mabana’s not-very-thriving Port one hundred years ago, was practically historic. When the Mabana Villa LLC purchased it, the previous owners had upgraded plumbing and electric, added amenities such as saunas and hot tubs, recreation rooms with pool tables and jukeboxes, in-room TV’s, all the luxuries … but now the saunas sported black mold, the hot tubs weren’t hot and the TV’s were relegated to one 31 inch tube set in the Commons cafeteria that was itself historic.

Now, some years later, the Mabana Sunset Villa (LLC) offers retirees medium care for a medium price. The staff is mostly minimum wage, but they’re caring and they’re honest. If we geezers need a sterling silver drool bucket,well, we can go to the assisted living franchises up north, pay the dime and spend our Golden Years with cable TV in our well-appointed and spacious rooms. Since most of us down here don’t need three shopping channels or care about the politics of Fox or MSNBC, the gossip at the Villa’s dining room will do just fine as about all the entertainment we’ll need as we all slide slowly but inevitably into history.

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