I'm sorry Wal-Mart

I did learn a few things on my way across the country this time. First, if you ate three pounds of spicy burritos, pooped on a hot frying pan, waited till it was burning and then urinated on it to cool it down you would get the basic idea of what a methane plant smells like, only on a lesser scale. Second, the mom and pop diner is dieing out and being replaced by taco stands, don't get me wrong, I love tacos but there is something special about a little place with a fat, ex-trucker cook and a retired rural prostitute for a waitress that is just, well, comforting. Third, I learned that Wal-Mart isn't as bad as I thought before. I have always laid claim to Wal-Mart stores destroying the economies of small town USA. That, sadly, is only partially true. Sure they may not pay too well and, in larger towns, not cities but towns, they may absorb main street and the businesses therein, however, in really small towns it seems that Wal-Mart actually helps them stay out of ghost town status. I was in a tiny burg in the center of New Mexico where there were big box stores of any kind. Guess what, Main Street was dying. Over half of the businesses on Main street were closed and had looked to be deserted for years. There was nothing else, no town, no trading post, not even a wise Indian Shaman for the next seventy miles. Odd, don't you think? Even without the intervention of a big box, the town was dieing. Now, as I crossed the desolate Oklahoma Pan Handle into Kansas, which is it's own story but I found a town that was alive, due, only to their having a Wal-Mart. The town was as boarded up and rotten as any I had seen however, this one still had some hope left in it's shuttered windows, all that hope, due to Wal-Mart. I was shocked, see in big cities they do ruin the living wage and bring small business to it's knees but in tiny towns they keep the economy afloat and give the poor a job and a better wage than they would otherwise be making. Now don't think I have gone soft on these companies, they are still bad for most of us but at least now I have learned that they harm but they can also help. Screw Home Depot though, they can go straight to hell and burn therein.