Glad someone did this. It’s hard for someone who didn’t grow up in TN during that era to understand Pusser’s celebrity.

And yes, I just re-upped my membership in the DSA.

Anyway, I don’t know about you, but that old canard about people getting more conservative with age is total bullshit for me. The 21st century, recent politics, and all the writing I did for a certain magazine about the ultra-rich absolutely radicalized me leftward, and there’s no going back.

I think back to my mom buying bread at the Day Old store at the Sunbeam factory in Nashville. She’d drive 10 miles to get secondhand baked goods. Guarantee you plenty of people are going to Walmart cuz it’s the only big box they can reach by bus, which is free in Worcester - AS IT FUCKING SHOULD BE.

I recognize the Old Man Yells at Cloud nature of this. That’s not it. Me being inconvenienced? Big whoop. I’m Gen X, we’ve been sucking it up & dealing with it for 50+ years. I start thinking about that guy behind me, a 40ish Black man wearing work boots & flannel. Or a mom who really needs formula.

With Worcester’s Walmart it’s complicated by the fact that New England’s 2nd largest city is such a shitty place for the unhoused. But there is logically NO WAY unhoused folks are responsible for a level of shoplifting severe enough to act like all that cheap shit belongs in a vault.

We live so close to it that in the depths of Winter it can be impractical to try and go any further than the Walmart. But my wife and both hate going there. And yep - folks in Northborough tend to be higher income, and we were shocked to notice just how much nicer the store there was.

Both CVS and Walmart have lost sales from me for this reason. CVS’s pharmacy practices aren’t bad but their retail practices in many neighborhoods are terrible that way. And the employees always look deeply irritated they have to do this. Which I don’t blame them, really. It’s fucking absurd.

She seemed puzzled by his words but I got it immediately. I can’t be the only person who has noticed all this.

I was thinking all of this walking around and seeing how much the store had locked up (most of the electronics, even cheap shit) then the guy behind me said to the cashier as he sat some boxed clothing item on the register conveyor belt, “This is crazy, huh?” He was referring to the plastic boxes.

Before I was a cliche of a writer living in New England I was a poor redneck kid from what one of Nashville’s sketchiest neighborhoods. I know condescending corporate messaging to the marginalized when I see it. No matter how much money I have I will always feel personally insulted by such a thing.

Not to mention the likely huge extra expense of the plastic boxes for Fruit-of-the-Loom long johns, or entire cases with individually keyed plastic or glass shields. Your company spent all that money based on racist and classist lies. Then it won’t hire enough people to attend to opening shit.

This is why I don’t write about sociological and political issues, I start getting angrier with every word. But I have to get it out of my system; I wish total failure on every company that has fully embraced the “Lock it all up” mentality. You outed yourself as run by fearful billionaires.

Truly dystopian, I mean. How can you not find it insulting when the store locks away shit like underwear? It’s the corporate equivalent of calling customers “you people.” And its based on a conservative-created narrative, supported by Silicon Valley, that all the Poors are out gang shoplifting.

And that, to me, is the dystopian part. It’s an overtly racist and classist way to do business. Walmart knows its demographic, and the one close to us serves lower income folks in South Worcester, Millbury, and Auburn. Most of whom have 1-3 jobs and are just trying to get the fuck by.

The dystopian: It’s a vast, featureless warehouse, and half of its aisles are utter chaos on a good day. Worse? It’s one of those Walmarts that has decided it is catering to nothing but low-grade criminals, apparently, and every useful thing is locked behind glass or in a case.

‘Oh, you’re a liberal blah-blah-blah.’ Yes, I am, but I’m also from the South where Walmart established itself first, so for a time shopping there when it made sense was a no-brainer. I’m thoroughly breaking that habit. It doesn’t help that the Walmart very close to us is massive and disorganized.