The Sauk Centre Walmart grocery entrance’s new mural by Lili Lennox. (June 30, 2025)
Things keep changing. That’s hardly a new idea.
“Everything changes and nothing stands still” (“πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει”, quoted by Plato in “Cratylus” ) (Heraclitus, Wikiquote)
I’ll be talking about the new mural in my town’s Walmart, how this isn’t the America I grew up in, changes that have been for the better, and why the latest thing in looming dooms — looks both familiar, and not all that distressing.
Sauk Centre’s Walmart Still Here: So is Downtown Sauk Centre
Okay, it’s just a sign: but “Thank you, Sauk Centre” is a nice touch.
Again, change happens. Take the Walmart Supercenter here in Sauk Centre, for example. Construction started in the summer of 2006. They opened mid-April, 2007.
Some folks, when they learned that we’d be getting a massive new employer and customer magnet near the Interstate, seemed convinced that we were doomed.
Others didn’t think it would ‘destroy downtown’, and figured that more folks coming off the Interstate meant more folks stopping for gas, getting something to eat, and maybe even shopping for stuff that wasn’t at Walmart.
That’s how I saw it, too. Nearly two decades later, Sauk Centre’s downtown is still here. Not exactly the same, but it’s still here.
I was getting my hips replaced in 2006, but took a few photos as Sauk Centre’s new business took shape.
Wal-Mart’s Grand Opening in Sauk Centre. April 18, 2007.
“The first impression I had, walking inside, was that the place was big. Really big. Sauk Centre being the size it is, I knew quite a few of Wal-Mart’s night shift, who were lined up to greet people coming in for the Grand Opening this morning.
First impression: this place is big! April 18, 2007.
“About 7:30 this morning, the Sauk Centre High School Choir sang Doo-Bee-Doo-Bee-Doo, or something of that sort, the store manager and Sauk Centre’s mayor said a few words, and finally, right around 8:00, a humungous scissors cut the ceremonial ribbon….”
The next big change in the Sauk Centre Walmart came this year.
They spent a few months shuffling merchandise around: adding a version of hide-and-seek to my weekly errands there.
It wasn’t just playing musical chairs with shelving.
They put glass-front doors on the eggs and dairy section’s refrigerated shelving, which adds a few steps to reaching stuff, but probably takes less energy.
The pharmacy’s computers were upgraded, involving the usual steep learning curve and/or glitchy new system. I’ve very likely not noticed other changes.
Then, on May 30, I missed the big ‘remodeling is done’ ceremony:
“Walmart remodel unveiled” Sauk Centre Herald (June 5, 2025) “The Walmart Supercenter remodel project was officially unveiled May 30 as the store welcomed guests to a ribbon cutting ceremony at 8 a.m. in Sauk Centre….”
I did, however, noticed that stuff I picked up was staying put. Which was a nice change of pace.
Eventually, I used the grocery entrance and noticed their new artwork.
I’d expected a fresh coat of paint as part of the remodeling, but not anything like that mural.
I meant to bring my camera along the next week, but forgot. And forgot, again, the week after that.
Eventually I didn’t forget, spending an interesting few minutes getting the whole mural into one picture.
I’ve lived in Sauk Centre since the 1980s, so I immediately recognized two downtown locations: the bakery and Mainstreet Theatre. Although I’ve never seen Sauk Centre’s movie theater festooned with lights like that.
Sauk Centre’s bandshell is larger than the mural shows it, and down by the lake: not in Main Street, as the mural’s perspective implies. But that’s just nitpicking.
The mural-in-a-mural, that little bit of a viking ship’s sail inside the band shell, isn’t just a flight of fancy on the artist’s part. Sauk Centre’s Roger Reinardy and other folks created “a 3D musical interpretation” there in 2017.
The band shell mural was new to me: I really don’t get out much these days.
Getting back to the new Walmart mural: a Minnesota artist created it, Lili Lennox. While discovering that, I saw that Sauk Centre businesses have become more ‘mural conscious’:
The “Local Walmart stuns…” article, by the way, is on a site that makes you sign in before reading. I didn’t. I caught the artist’s name in a Google search result summary for hometownsource.com, which might be a reasonable ‘for more information’ resource.
America Has Changed: Good News, Actually
More than six decades later: new buildings, new snowfall, old memories. (February 2022)
“There’s nothing quite so lovely as a brightly burning book”. The Hon:Mole MacCarony in Pogo. (March 30, 1953)
This isn’t the America I grew up in.
The political situation — actually, that hasn’t changed much. We’ve got new folks in charge, with new slogans and different quirks and preferences; but there’s the same quaint notion that ‘freedom of speech’ only applies to remarks supporting the ‘proper’ viewpoint. And that’s another topic.
Society as a whole — apart from the usual doomsayers, prognosticators, and passionate proponents of one Great Cause or another — that’s changed a lot.
For instance, when I was in Walmart this week I noticed a few families shopping. Families: mother, father, kids.
Part of that may be the increased number of Hispanic, or whatever the currently-proper term is, folks living around here. But I’ve seen families with my congenital melanin deficiency, too. That is very much not the way it used to be.
I mean, folks got married and had kids back when I was growing up. Humans, and human nature, hasn’t changed.
But in public? You’d see a mother and kids in the grocery or downtown. On Sunday, you’d see a mother and kids — and a father — at church. But the father wouldn’t be interacting with the kids, any more than absolutely necessary. And he’d never be caught actually holding a baby.
The current habit many fathers have, acting as if they’re part of the family — in public — that’s a huge change from the America of my youth.
Good Ideas and Perspective
Public information poster. (ca.1938)
I didn’t notice anyone with an obvious physical or mental disability in Walmart this week. But the ‘disabled parking’ spots were full when I arrived, so I had to wait for one to open up.
I didn’t actually have to wait. But it’s a whole lot easier on me if I park in one of those close-to-the-entrance spots.
Disabled parking got started in the mid-1970s, along with now-commonplace features like curb cuts: those little ramps at intersections that let folks on wheels cross the street.
I think such things are good ideas. Partly because I think letting folks with imperfect bodies cross streets and get into stores nearly as well as their neighbors makes sense. And partly because I’m one of those folks.
I also think good ideas can be rushed straight off the edge of sanity. A decade or so back now, I argued against a nifty idea that might have made accessible ramps mandatory for all buildings. All buildings. Think about it.
Let’s put this in perspective.
Today, you might see someone in a wheelchair, or otherwise not physically fit, in public.
Six decades back, things were different. The town I grew up in had, as far as anyone might casually notice, one disabled person: a middle-aged man with a rather noticeable case of kyphosis — a hunchback, in other words.
Fargo-Moorhead hadn’t grown to its current population then, but the odds were that a great many other of the 80,000 or so folks living there weren’t quite standard-issue, one way or another.
Since I’m arguably Lebensunwertes Leben, life unworthy of life,1 I see my culture’s increasing tolerance for folks who can’t live what used to be called a “quality lifestyle” as a good thing. For the most part.
Crises du Jour, Doing Our Job
“Crossword Murder” headline in the Cincinnati Post. (December 18, 1925)
A hundred years ago, chaos stalked the streets as madness ran rampant.
Experts and journalists warned us that crosswords were hurting our eyes, rotting our memories, imperiling families, destroying marriages, and making people commit murder. And yet, somehow, we survived.
Time passed, the crises du jour changed, and now I’m seeing today’s experts and journalists telling us that we’re doomed for new-and-improved reasons.
I think we’ve got real problems. We always have.
Some problems, at least their technical aspects, are new. Most — my opinion — are pretty much the same ones we’ve always had. Just repackaged, with new labels and a fresh coat of paint.
And, arguably, some of the same old problems become less common, while others elbow their way to the front of the line.
Part of our job was, and still is, noticing and correcting today’s societal ills while noticing and preserving what’s going right. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1928-1942, 2239; for starters)
I had planned on talking about some of today’s more front-of-the-line issues. But then a reliable old program I use stopped being reliable, and I saw how long this week’s post had become. So that will wait.
Besides, I’ve talked about that sort of thing before:
Disabled parking permit (“This article may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may only interest a particular audience….”)
Eugenics (“…a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population….”)[I strongly suspect it’s more ‘rebranded’ than ‘discredited’]
Eugenics in the United States (“This article’s lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points….”)
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
That reminds me, there’s an area near where I live that’s getting one or a few of those fancy apartment complexes by a corporation most known for its supermall chain (which I feel like is a common thing among supermall chain owners in my country, and now I’m curious about whether or not there are similarly functioning corporations in the States), which reminds me that my home province is one of the next best places, if not the next best place, to folks who wanna do big business but aren’t comfortable with my country’s Big City. Still, even with remote work having become more of a thing, the sort of work I wanna do is usually based in said Big City for better or worse. And with how hard it is to find work that pays as much as it dignifies well, I come to learn and remember to appreciate the little things, for they make the big things. Of course, that would be harder to achieve without wonderful folks like you in my life, Mr. Gill, so thanks very much for your work yet again!
I know we’ve got grocery (supermarket, actually) chains over here.
I’d be astonished if there were not corporate connections between entities that own large shopping malls and entities that own multiple-residence housing units. But I don’t know of – and couldn’t find, after a quick search – of a corporation that’s known for owning both shopping malls and residential complexes.
I do know that there’s been talk, off and on, for some time about the Mall of America ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mall_of_America ) adding a residential wing. That may not have worked out, but there seem to be two hotels (JW Marriott Minneapolis Mall of America and Radisson Blu Mall of America) physically connected to that megamall.
There apparently were plans for a residential addition to the West Edmonton Mall in Canada, but that – again apparently – didn’t work out.
I don’t know why we don’t have more (any?) shopping mall and residential developments here. Particularly in this regional climate, it sounds like a good idea. Add office space, and a fair number of folks wouldn’t, in principle, need to go outside during winter.
I could make a case against massive structures like that, too – – – and prefer living two or three hours away from this state’s major urban center.
Where was I? Work. Retail. Residential. Right.
Yeah – what you mentioned, remote work, strikes me as one of the better ideas that’s come up lately.
And I’ve felt your – split?? – interest – economic and cultural attraction to large urban centers – – – and preference to actually live where the ‘down’ sides of city life aren’t part of the mix.
I get the feeling that efforts to be mindful about nature and people are part of why there’s more nature-held land than we think. Combine that with bureaucracy, and I think I understand the lengthiness of turning land into residential and commercial areas. In any case, if places like Singapore are anything to consider, it’s not like large lots are the only way to make big business.
Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
I live in Minnesota, in America's Central Time Zone. This blog is on UTC/Greenwich time.
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That reminds me, there’s an area near where I live that’s getting one or a few of those fancy apartment complexes by a corporation most known for its supermall chain (which I feel like is a common thing among supermall chain owners in my country, and now I’m curious about whether or not there are similarly functioning corporations in the States), which reminds me that my home province is one of the next best places, if not the next best place, to folks who wanna do big business but aren’t comfortable with my country’s Big City. Still, even with remote work having become more of a thing, the sort of work I wanna do is usually based in said Big City for better or worse. And with how hard it is to find work that pays as much as it dignifies well, I come to learn and remember to appreciate the little things, for they make the big things. Of course, that would be harder to achieve without wonderful folks like you in my life, Mr. Gill, so thanks very much for your work yet again!
That’s a good question.
I know we’ve got grocery (supermarket, actually) chains over here.
I’d be astonished if there were not corporate connections between entities that own large shopping malls and entities that own multiple-residence housing units. But I don’t know of – and couldn’t find, after a quick search – of a corporation that’s known for owning both shopping malls and residential complexes.
I do know that there’s been talk, off and on, for some time about the Mall of America ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mall_of_America ) adding a residential wing. That may not have worked out, but there seem to be two hotels (JW Marriott Minneapolis Mall of America and Radisson Blu Mall of America) physically connected to that megamall.
There apparently were plans for a residential addition to the West Edmonton Mall in Canada, but that – again apparently – didn’t work out.
I don’t know why we don’t have more (any?) shopping mall and residential developments here. Particularly in this regional climate, it sounds like a good idea. Add office space, and a fair number of folks wouldn’t, in principle, need to go outside during winter.
I could make a case against massive structures like that, too – – – and prefer living two or three hours away from this state’s major urban center.
Where was I? Work. Retail. Residential. Right.
Yeah – what you mentioned, remote work, strikes me as one of the better ideas that’s come up lately.
And I’ve felt your – split?? – interest – economic and cultural attraction to large urban centers – – – and preference to actually live where the ‘down’ sides of city life aren’t part of the mix.
Good to hear from you and best wishes!
I get the feeling that efforts to be mindful about nature and people are part of why there’s more nature-held land than we think. Combine that with bureaucracy, and I think I understand the lengthiness of turning land into residential and commercial areas. In any case, if places like Singapore are anything to consider, it’s not like large lots are the only way to make big business.