WAL-MART

Grace Cox

 

Sam Walton started out the keeper of a franchise store

'til he counterfeited hula hoops with his competitor.

The nest egg that he feathered as he cashed in on this fad

Made Sam Walton of Arkansas, a very wealthy lad.

 

He sold off his Ben Franklin store and struck out on his own,

But one store would not be enough, 'cause Sam was in a zone.

Soon there was a growing chain of Walton's Five & Ten,

When it came to retailing the south would rise again.

 

Yippee buy low, Yippee sell high,

In retail it's sell or die.

 

Then in the early '60's Sam noticed a new trend,

The discount market caught his eye, it would become his friend.

With cheap imported products Sam would undercut the rest.

He opened his first Wal-Mart and proved he was the best.

Like Freud he looked for markets that suffered from envy,

Not the phallic kind, oh no, 'twas shopping malls they'd need.

So the tiny towns would welcome him with open arms

As he drove out the locals and bulldozed the farms.

 

Yippee buy low, Yippee sell low,

In retail everything must go.

 

One day the Wal-Mart posse came into Oly town,

Attorneys, sight consultants, accountants did abound.

They scouted high, they scouted low, they scouted neighborhoods

For a  location that was good.

 

In the middle of a retail zone they spied a trailer park,

They figured that the residents would be an easy mark,

The elderly, the unemployed, folks without much clout,

To the Wal-Mart executives it looked an easy rout.

 

Omnipotent attorneys keep the Wal-Mart chain intact,

Though lawsuits are quite plentiful and meritous in fact.

Illegal competition, union busting, bigotry,

Gray marketing, redlining, it goes on endlessly.

 

But when they scratched the surface of the Manor Candlewood,

They found an iron will in this proud neighborhood.

They said, "This is our home it may not look like much to you,

But we'll fight to defend it and we'll see this battle through."

 

They organized, they publicized, enlisted legal aid.

To hold the greedy villains of the corporate world at bay.

The residents and company had themselves a duel,

When the dust had settled, Wal-Mart was the fool.

 

Yippee they fought, Yippee they won.

Wal-Mart slinks off into the setting sun.

 

Rebellion starts in many ways and most of them are good.

A single voice, a neighborhood, the little train that could.

"I think I can,"  "She thinks she can" can lead to victory,

The struggle is worth fighting, even when the odds are bleak.

 

Yippee yahoo, Yippee well well,

Perhaps the next Wal-Mart will be a site in hell.