Wal-Mart giant invading paradise
June 6, 2004
We had houseguests from “the city” last weekend, and they found it difficult to leave Sunday afternoon for their return to Denver.
Two days away from the city seemed like a weeklong vacation, but suddenly they had to re-pack their bags for a trip back to urban hell – obnoxious drivers, rude store clerks, brown air, anonymous neighbors, high prices, sirens day and night, starless skies, endless hurries, phony pretense.
Luckily, we never have to leave.
But as residents in small towns always must, we wonder how long it will be before the city comes here to stay. Already weekend visitors are planning to return and pick out a vacant lot, a little piece of paradise they can bulldoze clear and build a home on.
As I told a contractor friend recently as we contemplated our growing town, “this would be a good place to live, if it weren’t for all the homebuilders.”
Just this month, four new houses were sold on our three-block stretch of neighborhood, and three more are under construction. In just two years, the inventory of building sites has been cut in half as new homes (including ours) accommodate the growth in a town that has more than doubled its size in a decade.
And now Wal-Mart is threatening.
The edge of town is just about nine blocks from our house, and that’s where Wal-Mart wants to build a superstore – an entire downtown under one roof.
At the first whisper of Wal-Mart’s plan, the predictable local opposition began to stir. Just think of the traffic, the bright lights, the unfair competition, the riff-raff, they warned. Crime will go up, little stores will close, starry skies will fade, traffic will jam, taxes will increase, the Earth may spin out of its orbit.
Of course, most of those who are warning of the evils of Wal-Mart jump into their cars three or four times a month to shop at the company’s nearest superstore eight miles down the highway, contributing to the traffic jams, parking under the bright lights, robbing mom-and-pop stores of their business, becoming part of the riff-raff
My wife and I made our bi-monthly pilgrimage two days ago, a re-supply trip to stock up on meat, canned goods, bathroom and kitchen paper, a few odds and ends – and of course a couple of items we hadn’t thought of beforehand, but couldn’t pass up once we saw them
Total: $209.63, our regular tithe to the richest family and largest company in America.
On the one hand, we resent the obscene wealth of the extended Walton family, descendents of the company’s founder, the behemoth company’s price-cutting execution of Main Street merchants, its suppliers’ exploitation of cheap foreign labor, the halo of light hovering over the giant store at night
Yet we shop there and at its giant DNA-related cousin, Sam’s Club.
The low prices, convenience and huge selection of goods – and reliably cheery employees – are too much to resist. Other big-box stores hold the same attraction, from Lowe’s to PetsMart.
I still drop into the local hardware store about once a week, even when I figure it won’t have the item I’m looking for, just to be a loyal customer and to preserve that small-town sensation
And so as our weekend houseguests departed and we prepared our covered-wagon for the re-supply trip to Wal-Mart, I found myself contemplating the prospect of a new superstore being built just a few blocks away from our remote outpost
By allowing a superstore near by, are we taking back a big part of what we so proudly gave up when we moved to this small town – the traffic, the bustle, the bright lights, the mass-marketing commercial life? Or are we being hypocritical, living in a quiet little village, pretending to protect small-town values, but sneaking into the Wal-Mart world a couple of times a month to take advantage of the good prices and bountiful shelves, willing to contribute to someone else’s traffic problems and to subsidize slave labor to save a few pennies on an item made in Bangladesh?
We’ll probably not join the opponents to Wal-Mart, as long as the company agrees to low-lighting its parking lot so we still can see the Milky Way. When it comes right down to it, though, we’ll act like all true-blue Americans – willing to sell out for a good price and a little more convenience
