I’m guessing it was around 1977 or maybe 1978. I was about 15 or 16 at the time. The one thing I remember was it was close to the end of the sexual revolution. You know, the whole free love hippie thing. I was trying to enjoy that as much as I could, but I was living in Louisiana, in the buckle of the Bible Belt to be exact. On a good day I’d end up with a hand job. But I digress. As I mentioned before, I pretty much lived in the middle of sugarcane fields on the outskirts of Donaldsonville. Apparently we had 7,000 people, but I think someone was padding the stats. It seemed more like 5,500. Anyway, the woman who owned the land down the street from our house was named Grace Garon. She inherited the land from her father. Sugarcane was not the way to go, she decided, so she sold the land. One day, a sign went up, a big giant billboard. It said, “Welcome to the Future Home of Wal-Mart.” To some of my younger readers who don’t know what a phone booth is, you may find this hard to believe. In 1978, I had never heard of Wal-Mart. I asked my good friend (I won’t divulge his name so let’s call him Bob). He said he was kind of familiar with it as a cheaper K-Mart. Something else was going on in our small town. There was more chatter than usual. The southern women usually talked about this guy or that guy who had a roving eye. Or this one or that one spent the night in New Orleans (known as the den of inequity). Once again, I digress (I really shouldn’t drink when I write these things) (but these are usually the best ones). The thing everybody was whispering about was how could Grace sell that land to Wal-Mart. It was going to bring a different element into the neighborhood. Low-income people would come in just to shop. And yes, I did here this…there will be a lot of blacks in our neighborhood. By the way, it’s those kinds of statements that made me leave Louisiana as quickly as I could. Nobody was willing to tell Grace how they felt. My parents weren’t part of that whole thing. My dad wanted the Wal-Mart next door. He wouldn’t have to go into town to shop as much. He could practically walk there. My friend Bob and I wanted to do something. We were young and we were rebels, at least we tried to be. We went out and measured that sign. We bought plywood the same size and whitewashed it. In the most professional way we could, we stenciled a sign of our own. I can’t remember what the sign said. But it was something like, “Loud mufflers, crowds, a hike in crime and loss in value to real estate…all this and more at the new Wal-Mart.” My friend and I waited until 2 a.m. and put our sign over it. We thought the sign would get a laugh. It got more. The newspapers took note, and people were talking. Somehow Miss Garon rescinded the deal. There was talk about who put the sign up. We swore to never speak of the sign to anyone else. Until now, we haven’t. Once a year at Christmas, we bring up “the sign.” Here’s the interesting part. Grace’s daughter, Lisa, reads this blog and is a friend of mine. She doesn’t read every one, but I have a feeling she’ll read this one. I’ve never told this to Lisa. She’ll learn it along with everyone else. As far as Bob, his anonymity has been kept. I’m only outing myself. As far as Miss Garon, I think she did quite well by selling that land to a developer who subdivided it. I don’t think she’s hurting. Everyone else’s property value went right up. I told you that to tell you this. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog. I think it was Pussification of a Nation Part III. I talked about Calabasas High School and the fact the P.E. teachers weren’t doing their jobs. Just like the small, tiny grassroots effort of myself and Bob, my small, tiny grassroots effort of writing that blog may have done something. Let me explain. As I described, my all-time favorite client, Genie Francis, and I were walking on the track. By the way, Genie will be on Oprah soon. I’ll tell you when it’ll be on. She will talk about the crap involved with being a child actor. I love Genie. She is like a sister I never had. But I digress…again. When Genie and I showed up at the school track last week, the kids weren’t sitting in the middle of the field. The teachers weren’t frolicking around the track twirling whistles around their fingers. Both teachers were on the field coaching. The kids were running and sweating. Could this be a coincidence that it happened after my blog? Absolutely. But I think the odds are in my favor that this blog was the reason this happened. Why? First off, lots of people in that area read this blog. It could have got back to the principal. And secondly, it would be too much of a coincidence that for the first time in a year and a half these teachers were actually doing their fucking jobs. To be honest, I don’t give a rat’s ass as to why they were doing their jobs and those kids were sweating. It put a big smile on my face because it was happening.
