Nostalgia and Walmart

Grandmother, you were in your twenties,

already with a husband and two children,

when Walmart was born. So many more

historically important markers lined your life—

the beginning of World War II and the end

while you were a child, a teenager

by the Korean War—but perhaps I marvel

at this one because we spent my childhood

so often with Walmart as the setting for my

memories.

.

I wish you were here to remember with me

the old, tiny carousel that sat in front

of the original Walmart in our town. There

were three horses, scraped-paint making them

primary-colored appaloosas and pintos (right,

Grandmother? Wasn't there a red one, a blue?).

And inside, there was a snack bar with black

and white tile floors (was is tile, Grandmother,

or just linoleum?). We got nachos there,

with jalapenos topping the cheese corralled

away from the chips. We walked the aisles

of the actual store, and you treated me

to so many toys, so many Breyer horses

smaller in scale than the carousel ones, but

appropriately chestnut, dun, grullo.

.

You never liked the Walmart that replaced

the first one. It skipped across the road and

grew from an open field of sage grass (right,

Grandmother? Wasn't it sage grass? Was it some

other kind of grass?) into a Supercenter.

.

(But it never had our carousel or our nachos,

did it, Grandmother?)