Stepping into the past, to imagine how people lived in the Mazatlan of around 1900, is as easy as walking through a door or up a flight of stairs. Or both. Two locations in Old Mazatlan are currently offering the public just such an experience. Casa Machado, the small jewel of a museum that hotelier Ernesto Coppel (of the Pueblo Bonito and most recently the Nuevo Mazatlan development on the north edge of the city) recently opened, is a brief but worthwhile step into yesterday. You'd hardly know the museum is there if you weren't looking for it. There is no sign to identify the place, just the open door with a carpeted stairway beyond it. The entry door is on the right-hand side of Calle Constitucion, a one-way street, in the block just before it reaches the Plazuela Machado in Old Mazatlan. You pay the modest admission fee of 10 pesos at the desk just inside the door and climb the stairs -- but wait. Even before you reach the top of the stairway, where several rooms are furnished as they would have been 100 years ago, there are blown-up photos of Mazatlan's good old days that will command your attention. Good old days? Well, that depends on your point of view. Some visitors will admire the rolltop desk in the study, the first room on the left at the top of the stairs. It had the ability to cover the clutter (or one's private business) at a flick of the hand when its owner received unexpected company. A photo on the far side of the desk shows a lovely Victorian building

that was torn down on Calle Belisario Dominguez to make way for the modern monstrosity of a bank building that stands there now. There's also a picture of the old Mazatlan airport, of a vintage a little later than 1900. It sat where the University of Sinaloa campus is now, with its runway extending northward to the site occupied today by the baseball stadium. Next you come to the dining room in what would have been an elegant turn-of-the-century home. Set for a gala banquet, with embroidered table linen and crystal stemware, this table for an obviously well-to-do family would have been the scene of an extremely formal dinner party, or perhaps a holiday family gathering.. Then you reach the parlor and your back begins to ache just thinking about how uncomfortable the sofa and side chairs look. And then there's a bedroom, probably for a young daughter, who would have sweltered in this climate with the fancy netting draping her bed and impeding the flow of air. A couple of old-time catalogs, in Spanish, attest to the presence in Mexico of an early-day Sears Roebuck or similar, just as there was in the United States and in Canada. Considering the primitive modes of transportation available to the Mazatlecos of yesterday to get to the larger cities with the big stores, it stands to reason that local residents would have done a lot of their shopping by mail order.