Why I love going to Walmart

Much has been written about Walmart over the years. Almost all of it bad. It seems everyone who has a pen and writes about Walmart casts the conglomerate in a negative light. Culturally and socially conscious lights have described how Walmart killed Main Street America. Rather than opening up a larger middle class, Walmart heralded an age of commercial have's and have not's. Ignoring that this has been a fact since at least the Industrial Revolution, Walmart has been blamed for ending the ideal of the Victorian merchant class.

More recently, Walmart has become a place where the despicable aesthetes of our day derive amusement, mocking and criticizing the people of Walmart, both employees and customers. Others condemn the store for shifting jobs to China, plastic waste, and employing hard workers for a non-living wage, employees who thus are subsidized by government monetary programs. All that is Walmart, as an early Times Picayune man might say, are manifestations of a low streak in man's taste that has not yet come out in civilization's wash.

Each of these concerns is important, but today, I want to focus on why I love going to Walmart. Walmart really is America. If you want to see the average American, go to Walmart. Rich, poor, dirty, clean, Christian, atheist, obese, emaciated, white, black. Walmart is the market place for America.

Walmart parking lots are much friendlier than the more upper class accepted Sam's. There is no ruder a place in America than a Sam's parking lot, where obnoxiously oversized SUVs fight against each other for a spot 10 feet closer than the next. All the while a perfectly capable 55 year old gets out of his Lincoln, parked in a handicapped area, which now takes up a full quarter of the parking lot. As I got off the bus at Walmart today, and a stream of people entered through the walk zone, a long line of Walmart customers politely waved we ambulators onward.

Once inside, we were blasted by delightful air conditioning and greeted by a smiling octogenarian. Hello to you also, Ms. Shirley.

Some Walmarts have their produce on the left entrance, others the right. I've never figured out how Walmart determines where to put the groceries. I thought perhaps it was based on the directions of a compass, owing to one side of the store getting more heat in the afternoon, thus requiring more energy to refrigerate. But I've seen Walmart groceries oriented at the N,S,E,and W of stores. I really haven't figured it out. I doubt it is random, though, as Walmart doesn't do anything randomly.

Today, I entered the grocery section. Boy, did I go to town. Is there anything better than seeing fresh produce lined up, stacked high, proudly glowing. The Psalmist saw the declaration and handiwork of God in the heavens and the sky (Psalm 19). I also see it in the produce section.

86 cents a pound? Surely, that's a price error. No, I scanned it myself. That beautiful, cardinal Roma tomato, which has so many possibilities sitting on that shelf -- it came from just a small seed and was delicately watered for weeks, soaking in God's good sunshine and fed by God's organic soil. And here it is before me! 86 cents a pound! I will take three pounds.

Perfectly shaped and seeded strawberries. $1.86/pound? I remember when we could only get strawberries in March and April, around the time the Pontchatoula festival celebrated the local strawberry harvest. Yet here we are, six months removed from our peak season and I have before me a whole army of heart-shaped, affordable antioxidant-laden berries. What's that over there? A bouquet of lilies on sale for $3? These will intoxicate my room with heavenly smells, and yes, I indulged in this luxury. What a bounty. I will feed myself for days with $20 of groceries.

Although I do not need any clothes, I had time before the next bus pickup. I browsed the clothing section, and what do you know, a pack of Transformers socks, five of them for $6! These were the old school style, when Bumble Bee was a cheap old VW bug. I smiled while holding the socks, but ultimately knew they would have to go back to the rack. Flowers or socks? Finances would not allow both luxuries, so I chose the more beautiful.

It was during this detour that I had an exchange with a fellow Walmart shopper. Even though my basket was full of groceries, she had started to walk away with it. Perhaps the forbidden fruit was too much temptation. Naturally, I stopped her and said, "This is my basket." She quickly apologized and I reclaimed my basket and we went our separate ways. There it was -- the American spirit. Take what you can while you can. It's not the most virtuous thing about America, but I could appreciate it today.

Still moving onward, I was picked up a package of bar soap, at just 11.7 cents per ounce. There was still yet time, so I moved onward to the home and garden section. There I wistfully thought of owning my own BBQ grill, but how would I ever get this home? Maybe one day.

While dreaming of the possibilities, I overhead one elderly lady explaining to what appeared to be her daughter which medicines she had to take. Her new med, spironolactone, unlike her previous med hydrochlorithiazide, she said, was a potassium sparing diuretic. And that's why she didn't have to continue with her potassium. Wow, I even got a biochemistry lecture while in Walmart today. It never ends.

What a beautiful day! I hope you will cherish it and all that it contains within it. Find the good in the simple, the beautiful, even in what some hate. There is good to be found everywhere, even Walmart.