My Town Has a Super Wal-Mart

It's weird how some things will get people talking.

There's been a Wal-Mart in Collinsville, IL, for a very long time, and as it's gradually gobbled up the local shops and absorbed the local business, nobody's said a word. It has grown, like so many Wal-Marts across the country, from a novelty into a necessity--the only place in town you can go to get a ping pong table and a carton of milk at 11:00 at night. And like a hermit crab, it's grown out of its shell, and the minimum wage workers came one day to move everything out of it, load shelves of cheap merchandise onto trucks, and drive a few blocks to the Brand New Wal-Mart Location.

We have a Super Wal-Mart, now.

The residents talk about it like we've just been granted an exclusive contract on a space exploration mission: "Did you hear? We're getting a Super Wal-Mart!"

"What's that?"

"It's like a normal Wal-Mart, only...Super."

For the uninitiated (and frankly, there probably aren't any), a Super Wal-Mart stays open 24 hours and sells all types of groceries along with their usual mess of discount DVDs, clothes, and housewares. That's 24 hours of rolled back pricing! Excited?

Like many Americans, I have a distrust of Wal-Mart. It goes back to when I was a kid and my favorite grocery store (that's right, as a kid, I had a favorite grocery store) was driven out of business by the Giants of Capitalism. At first, it didn't seem so bad. But then, other stores began to go away.

I'm not going to make the argument that Wal-Mart drives up prices overall or offers less variety than consumers need--both of those are valid arguments, and I'm sure they have very well done research to back them up, but that's someone else's battle to fight. My problem is that every town with a Wal-Mart is starting to look exactly the same.

It's easy to do when your company eats up other businesses like some Ultra-Capitalist praying mantis. Every town is starting to have that long, dark parking lot leading up to the blue and white or brown and white Wal-Mart; inside, the ceilings rise up to incomplete rafters of steel, and despondent old women push shopping carts packed with unessential items to long check out lanes.