Big Box Closings: Walmart in Rural West Virginia

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Read What happened when Walmart left. We have all read articles on what happens when Walmart comes. This is what happens when it left the county in the US that has the lowest life expectancy. It is not just about jobs and taxes, its about health and social life.

"Socialization. We lost our socialization factor. Now it’s hard to keep track of people, there’s no other place like it where you can stand and chat.”

There used to be 28 churches of her United Methodist denomination in the county, now there are six; there were seven bars in Welch, all but one have closed; there were three cinemas, now it’s down to one; there are no community centers left; many of the corner shops have gone.

“There’s nothing here,” McKinney says. McKinney has one other, rather astonishing, reason to regret that the store closed. Walking. Walking?  “I went to Walmart for the walk,”

What part do Big Box stores play in in your part of the country? in your life?

How has that been changing?

K-Mart and Sears Close in Lake County



The site of the former K-Mart Super Store which closed in 2016 
The Sears store at the regional mall is supposed to be closing in mid-September. It anchors one end of the mall; the other anchors are Dillard's and Macys. The mall also has a Penny's and a Dick's store. The last was just build a couple of years ago to replace a smaller store nearer to me.

The former K-Mart was just across the road from Walmart. It had not been built when I arrived in 1989. There was a small K-Mart nearer to me. When that store was vacated for the Super Store pictured above, Lowes move in. About the same time we also got a Home Depot about 5 miles away.

Later a small mall was build between Lowes and K-Mart. It houses Kohl's and some smaller stores. For awhile it also housed Dick's and a Barnes and Noble.

More recently a Target store was build between me and Lowes. Staples also moved first in a location near to K-Mart, but then downsized to a smaller location across the street next to Walmart that had been occupied by my fitness center. That fitness center had moved to a large location  on the farther side of the K-Mart building.

So in the past 25 years there has been a lot of change in these stores. I began to think how I have related to them over the time period.

In the 1990s I actually did a lot of my shopping around the country rather than around the county. During those years I annually went to professional meetings in places like Toronto, Boston, Washington, Minneapolis and Tampa Florida. Most of my books and CDs, two of my largest expenses, were bought from those places. But I also bought clothes. Collected Tilley hats in Toronto which got me a lot of favorable attention on the campuses of Notre Dame and University of Michigan. And I bought a lot of things from Ron Jon's Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida, near to where my aunt lived. 

When I retired in 2003, I ceased to travel by airplane. From my previous buying patterns one would think that internet buying would be a natural replacement. However things are more complicated.

Amazon became the place where I buy almost all my books, and I have bought even more books since I retired because I have more time to read. However my buying of  music CDs has greatly diminished. Largely that has been because of all the availability of classic music on the internet. 

I have found that I do a lot more "entertainment" buying since I retired, and that tends to be clothes, and things for the house. I call it entertainment since it mainly gets me out of the house. Since I have a lot of  dietary restrictions I don't eat out much. Of course when I went to professional meetings in the 1990s a lot of my shopping there was entertainment even though I had specific goals. I would visit a lot of stores where I  had not intention of buying anything. I have not gotten into a lot of internet shopping because I use the computer for a lot of other things. So I like to get away from the computer to walk, garden, etc. Shopping is one of the etc.

This afternoon on the way to take the K-Mart picture, I stopped by Target, Kohls, and Walmart in search of a physical fitness item. No success. There were a lot of back to school and off to college specials, and some of the shoppers seemed to fit those categories. Target and Walmart have both been expanding their grocery selling areas. Kohl's and my grocery story have both recently put in special pick up areas for those shopping on line. Part of my aversion to shopping on line is that I like to see and touch things. Of course that does not matter much in the case of books.  


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