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About a month ago, a national columnist complained that Americans enjoy celebrating the rags-to-riches success of Sam Walton, but don't stop to ponder the pernicious effects of Wal-Marts -- the main calamity being the closing of many downtown stores as the behemoth on the highway sucks in all the retail dollars and exports them to Bentonville, Ark.
The truth is more complicated.
Salida may have only 5,000 people, but it has two commercial districts: an old brick downtown and a strip along U.S. 50. When I moved here 15 years ago, downtown was for locals, and the highway served tourists.
Prices were exorbitant in either zone, and selection was
often meager. So, as had been the case when we lived in
Kremmling and Breckenridge, we made monthly Tarzhay
Runs.
Many other mountain folk did the same thing.
(In the montane vernacular of that era, a Tarzhay
Run
meant a quick trip to civilization to stock up on
toothpaste, toilet paper, and similar commodities at a
Target store. It was pronounced Tarzhay
because no
self-respecting resident of a world-class resort like
Breckenridge would admit to shopping at a place so mundane
and middle-American as a suburban Target store.
(When my brother ran the shoe department at the Glenwood
Springs K-Mart a decade ago, he proposed that they attract
the Aspen trade with a sign over a side door that said
Le Mart Que,
but his advice was ignored.)
Wal-Mart opened in 1986. We lost a big new Ben Franklin downtown, although local gossip said it was more the result of divorce than of Wal-Mart. We also lost a downtown sporting-goods store; the owner can't compete with Wal-Mart. Woolworth's closes a few years later, but the company said that although the Salida store had been making money, it was closing all its small-town stores.
That's about it for losses that might be attributed to Wal-Mart, and the buildings that held those closed stores are fully occupied and have been for some time. Granted, business closings are painful for those involved, but overall, the town doesn't seem to be hurting.
With Wal-Mart here, we can get commodity goods at reasonable prices. I can't see how it is an evil thing for me to enjoy convenient access to a greater variety of goods at cheaper prices, but maybe national columnists know something I don't.
Without those Tarzhay Runs, I save time, and more money stays in town because I don't have to spend it for lunch and gasoline in the city. I suspect that the money Wal-Mart exports is money that a small town never kept, anyway.
Wal-Mart did change the commercial geography of Salida. Now locals shop more along the highway strip. Downtown is becoming more and more a tourist spot, with growing numbers of quaint boutiques, souvenir shops, T-shirt dealers and similar ephemera.
But our downtown looks more attractive than ever before, and it's a far more interesting place for leaning on lampposts, loafing on benches, inspecting shop windows and similar idling. So how is that a loss for the community?
I don't know, but some mountain towns -- Steamboat Springs, for one -- have opposed Wal-Mart. It's the same snobbery that made Target into Tarzhay, with the added benefit of allowing local merchants to continue charging captive prices.
This is not to say Wal-Mart is entirely beneficial. Like
most retail enterprises -- like the small shops it
supposedly replaces -- it pays low wages and avoids
employee benefits. The selection of merchandise is guided
by the principle of if everybody doesn't want it, you
can't have it.
There's also the 60-Minutes Made in
the USA
issue.
Those are all reasonable causes for bashing Wal-Mart. But as nearly as I can tell, the common charge that a Wal-Mart will destroy a downtown retail district is utterly false.
It didn't happen here, and I've yet to visit a place where it did happen. But it's part of conventional wisdom now, and it will join a long list of other things that everybody knows that just ain't so.
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