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Toys "R" Us faces quickening competition from such all-purpose discount stores as Wal-Mart and Target. Its bloated inventory system costs hundreds of millions of dollars each year. It must somehow cut costs while remodeling stores and bolstering employee training and service. And Toys "R" Us managers can only pray, as they do each fall but even more so this year, that among the new toys they have bought by the trainload are a few hits--the Tickle Me Elmos and Power Rangers--that will fill parking lots with minivans...
Consumers pay less for a frilly, carpet-covered toilet seat at a cavernous Wal-Mart or K-mart than they would pay for that same glorious throne at a local mom-and-pop store. And, thus, the consumer is better off. Who am I to stand in the way? By criticizing this trend, I am not trying to advance a socialist agenda, I am merely lamenting the disappearance of small-town America, the America suggested to me by Norman Rockwell paintings...
...what about my image of small town America? Perhaps I am a little too naive, a little too romantic in my notion of what the American West should be like. But it seems that it couldn't always have been this homogenous. Yes, Wal-Marts are now ubiquitous, and that Taco Bell chihuahua exhorts people across the nation to eat gorditas, but it wasn't always so. Besides strip malls, chain stores and other such monuments to consumerism, the other factor contributing to the increasing uniformity of America is the combination of cable TV and other forms of media saturation...
...what's the solution? We must be aware of the cost of both our new warehouse style of capitalism, as embodied by Wal-Mart and Costco, and the revolution in communications technology. Small-town America no longer exists the way it did when our parents were growing up. You can still find unique places, but they are becoming more and more rare...
...hope that somewhere out there, some town can withstand the onslaught of modern culture and consumerism and retain some element of their history and individuality. And, if that fails, there's always the "inexhaustible" array of useless garbage you can buy at Wal-Mart for those of us still seeking variety. Timothy F. Sohn '01, a Crimson editor, is a history and science concentrator in Adams House...