Julio’s Musings Around Columbia County, New York

As I was raking leaves with my daughter this past autumn Saturday, a group of high school kids in all their glory passed by , jostling , joking and strutting. They seemed so carefree that I felt like dropping the rake and all my responsibilities and just tagging along. Well I didn’t. What I did was ask my 10th Grade daughter if she knew the kids? She said with a clear smirk she did and they were freshman. She went on to lambast them and say no one liked the freshmen , that they were wimps of some sort (it was getting cool outside and related to the cold). We got into it a little more and I asked her if she and her friends fraternized with them and she said “no way”. When I asked what she and her friends did when they came and sat on the same table in the cafeteria she said “we ignore them!”

Anyway, I just loved it. Though I am was not a girl it did bring some memories back from my own high school years. Mind you , I would and never did have the kind of attitude my daughter expressed as I would think it better to have a lively cafeteria table then a group of siloed cliques. Nevertheless there was just something raw about the whole thing and was wondering if I could bring the same approach to the work place. Well I am only kidding or day dreaming of course but that attitude if I don’t like you I am not going to deal with you even if you are in my face was something I had not thought about in a long time.

It has a certain power and finding something so trivial to differentiate as being in 9th or 10th grades
has a certain wonder to me as I contemplate the mind of a high schooler.

Over in Greenport , a Town adjacent to the city of Hudson in the boonies of New York, the next revision of Wal-Mart just recently opened replacing the long standing box store in the same town. The new Wal-Mart is the Super-Center variety and is already the toast of the town! You need a compass to navigate the store and all its aisles and it even has it’s own Dunkin Donuts store within alleviating the previous tradition of a separate stop for my favorite coffee brew.

I can’t say what it doesn’t carry at the moment as I have not been able to navigate it in it’s entirety yet
Given it’s complete variety of meats and produce it will definitely put pressure on the nearby Shop-Rite and who knows what assortment of mom and pop shops it hasn’t driven out of business yet.

It will also become a beacon for a larger part of the surrounding area which is basically rural and not adverse to going 50 miles to shop at the temple of retail (even if they can’t afford the gas guzzled by their SUV’s).

Though I make no apologies for shopping there, the latest store further sharpens the dysfunctional and destructive car oriented mentality of American Culture. It attracts people way out in the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere with the only possible mode of transport being the car.
It has no esthetic soul as even the previous one about 1/2 mile down the road had fitting in somewhat better with a slightly suburban community surrounded by an agricultural rural community. As is the bent in the architecture of the USA mass market, it looks like it can be anywhere and nowhere.

Photos to follow soon….
[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares,Wal-Mart, Columbia County[/tags]