“Jingle bells, jingle bells, the Waltons smell...”

Santa Claus has been found and the North Pole has melted. Long live Arkansas!

By opening their massively ugly box stores in former corn and sod fields throughout America’s interior, the small-town, corner-store dream of Sam Walton has succeeded in turning vast swathes of America into factory towns similar to the coal and steel-mining past that gave way to places like western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other not so “booming” parts of our nation.

Having crept in during the evening twilight whilst mom and dad were carting Bobby and little Peggy to and fro between soccer practice (team paid for by local taxes for the school) and gymnastics (privately owned center), on the wonderful patch of land upon which the sun left fading and lingering bits of purple and orange across a darkening sky, the bulldozers started hacking and coughing away at the land.

“Gee, I wonder what’s going up out there?” Such an innocuous question posed by mom to dad as they drove their conventional family of 4 to the Outback Steakhouse for a nourishing and really big dinner.

“Don’t know, Helen, can’t be anything really. That land is off-limits to any building and cannot be zoned.”

Background: Hartsville, Any State has a population of 14,678. Most of the people in this traditional glimpse of America are either self-employed in shops or restaurants up in the center of the old town; or, they are working at the bicycle tire plant; or, they are working in some company that is servicing the bicycle tire plant. In any case, the town has been functioning with the same businesses, give or take a few that close down and reopen with a new “commercial offering”, for the past century.

The bicycle tire plant has been running since it first opened it doors back in 1896. For better or worse, surviving good times and bad, the factory has been the backbone of the community. Until that fateful dinner at the Applebee’s between a town councilman and a Business Development VP from Wal-Mart: promises of no-taxes were made, an envelope passed beneath the table and voila!

Suddenly, on land that was never supposed to be used for commercial purposes, massive cinder-block-like buildings took shape in the night and the field was hidden beneath a desert of blacktop.

Around the new Wal-Mart, a string of fast-food joints popped up: Boston Chicken, McDonaldsBurgerKingWendy’s, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, Friday’s, Olive Garden, etc. Business at the fun little family-run places in town started to decline and a few closed. Employees, who had been part of these businesses for decades, were suddenly faced with unemployment or join the “team” at the fast-food places with mission statements and motivational speeches.

With their decreased earnings in hand, these new “team members” of fast food America started going to Wal-Mart because really, “you can’t beat the prices!” As result of increased business at the Wal-Mart, some of the family-owned shops in town, closed. Now, these unemployed former employees of “Al’s Bootery” (first opened in 1947 by a returning WWII vet) found themselves filling out applications at the Wal-Mart.

Suddenly, “dad” (Bobby and Peggy’s father) is told that due to that “great contract” the bicycle tire plant had gotten for fitting bikes sold in Wal-Mart, the largest retailer of bikes in America, the company had to close its doors.

74% of the bi-cycle tire plant’s finished product was for tires being sold in Wal-Mart and one fine day Wal-Mart demanded that the prices for the bikes be lowered by 15%. The bike plant asked the tire manufacturer to drop his prices by 20%. They couldn’t and the bike maker started buying tires made in China.

Having lost 74% of its business, the company had no option left but to declare bankruptcy. Suddenly, with their severance checks in hand, the good, patriotic Americans of Hartsville went shopping—at the Wal-Mart. They even had dinner at the hotdog stand inside!

Business started to boom for Wal-Mart and so they absorbed the recently laid-off from the bike tire plant. With their first checks in hand, the new proud “associates” of Wal-Mart became loyal shoppers at their place of employment; simply because they could no longer afford the prices at the shops in town and for the most part all had closed anyway: filling the vacant storefronts now were a pawn shop here, a Walgreens there, a CVS across the street (economically dislocated people need more over-the-counter drugs to make up for the ailments caused by poor eating habits, stress, smoking and no health care).

The cycle spun round and round until eventually 85% of the people in town were working at Wal-Mart. They average salary was around $1350 a month which forced many people to take second jobs at the fast-food places and even at the Sam’s Price Club.

The only thing missing is the dormitories for our Wal-Mart associates and “company scrip”—and then, Wal-Mart will be even a better provider than the US Government.

Merry Christmas from Sam Walton’s multi-billion dollar family to your $2189-a-month-after-taxes family! “Jingle bells, jingle bells…”