Dear Editor:
What is all this wailing and moaning about Wal-Mart expansion?
If Wal-Mart enlarges, is that the end of business in Gilroy?
Dear Editor:
What is all this wailing and moaning about Wal-Mart expansion? If Wal-Mart enlarges, is that the end of business in Gilroy?
Change is the only thing constant in this life and we’d be wise to get used to it. When I grew up there was a corner grocery store, a family affair within a block or two in most any direction – very convenient, most importantly there was the credit available. We’d run out of money by the middle of the month and then the friendly grocer would carry us on his books until payday on the first of the month – no interest on our debt.
Then developed the “chain” stores, Atlantic & Pacific or Piggly Wiggly. Self-service, no credit and cheaper prices. The chain stores soon put the friendly family grocer out of business – thus ended an era of warm, personal business relationships.
In the mid-’40s (war time) there was a popular song “The Lamplighter Serenade.” The lamplighter was a man who lit the gas mantels on the street lights each evening just before dark. He had to return in early morning to turn off the gas fueling. Then came electricity with the light bulb – no more gas mantels, no more lamp-lighting, no more lamplighter.
At home we heated our house with coal. The coal man dumped the coal down a chute into the basement. Burned coal left ashes that had to be carried out to the ash pit in the alley. Once a month the ash man cleaned the ash pit. Then came natural gas with a conversion burner – nice clean fuel – no ashes. Thereupon the coal man and ash man became unemployed. The old had to give way to the new.
In the summertime it was a treat to find the ice man and his horse-drawn wagon delivering ice to a neighbor’s house. In the window of the house was a sign indicating whether 50, 75 or 100 pounds of ice was wanted.
The ice man chipped the large block of ice and carried the wanted amount on his shoulder up to the waiting lady of the house. As soon as he left his wagon we kids would run up to the wagon and gather the ice chips to eat. Boy what a treat on a hot summer day. Then came the refrigerator …
Often I would be awakened early in the morning by the sound of clinking glass milk bottles or the rattle of coins in a glass milk bottle as the milkman made our delivery.
Then came homogenized milk in wax cartons sold in the supermarket – so cheap that the milkman could not compete price-wise. So ended the glass milk bottle and doorstep deliveries by a milkman.
So what’s all this fuss about a super-super Wal-Mart store in Gilroy? The old gives way to the new. No one complained when Orchard Supply drove Don Chesbro’s hardware store on Monterey Street out of business. Nor was there such an emotional outcry when the discount houses east of the freeway closed down Joe Rizzutto’s Shoe store, also on Monterey Street.
It’s survival of the fittest, a good old evolutionary dictum. Please remember patronage of Wal-Mart is voluntary – let’s keep it that way.
J.G. McCormack, Gilroy
Submitted Tuesday, March 4
