A Wal-Mart Grows in Wyoming

"Shaped by the natural resources that surround it, Rock Springs is filled with small businesses that cater to the needs of its residents. Growing up in a family that started its own business, Smyth Printing, I was raised to believe in the importance of customer service, fast turn-around, and quality products. For twenty-five years, my parents have established partnerships within the community. City Market was the local grocery store where we shopped. I got my hair cut at Lynn's beauty salon and ate cookies at Fred's bakery.

Now, all of those businesses have been wiped out and in their place stands a massive concrete box called Wal-Mart."

"...Back across the street at Smyth Printing, my parents have established a small business whose primary focus is narrowly defined by a particular trade, not five or six. While the nation's largest retailer is struggling to defend itself from public attack on their poverty wages and stingy health care plan, we are looking for ways to keep my family business afloat. While carrying boxes of envelopes into Hemphill Trucking, the owners chat with my father about the booming natural gas wells up North.

...Perhaps Wal-Mart does represent inevitable economic winds of change; nonetheless, we need to fight to protect the small businesses and independent spirit of towns like Rock Springs, Wyoming."