Walmart Alaska

Wow! Remember those good ol' “Cowboy & Indian” towns you visited as a youngster, during summertime vacations all aboard that “stretch” station wagon – the kind Clark Griswold drives around in still today? And these towns were just about everywhere, from sea to shining sea! So with cotton candy dripping all over your chaps from the heat of the noon-time sun making life miserable, from out of nowhere there would come a raucous, guns a blazing for the staged gun battle. Yes there was Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley, Billy the Kid, Butch, Calamity Jane and not to forget, Deadwood Dick, you name it - as our stage coach heroes and robbers would perform in this shoot-out on Main Street. And then the gun battles were followed by those Indian scalpings that looked so real? So, was it the “good guys” or the “bad guys” the winner takes all? Well, I guess the Walmart Kingdom wants to entice shoppers, so the store in Alaska has been the first to unveil this same kind of staged battle – to break the boredom for kids in tow on the parents' weekend shooting spree – I mean shopping spree. Yes, indeed, there comes now to a Walmart near you, entertainment! Last week Walmart unveiled its “Main Street Shoot-Out”, right here in Anchorage. A guy on a scooter(Outlaw) and misbehaving was arrested by the Store Sheriff(Assistant Manager), and during the arrest, the outlaw pulled out a gun and shot the sheriff! It was a concealed weapon, but that is OK in Alaska, just ask Deadbeat Dick, I mean Fred Dyson. Then to make the scene more realistic, soon the place was overwhelmed with off-duty police officers and entering from every which way but loose, men and women in blue banishing concealed weapons. It was one hell of a sidearm-show, according to eye-witnesses, like it went from a one-on-one to a tag-team extravaganza. Look, it had to be staged, as business continued on as usual! People stopped just to catch the action then continued buying stuff on the cheap. And as a fake ambulance and medic team arrived, it made it look all so real. Of course they were fake policemen, as they were all caught eating donuts in the aftermath. I guess with an economy on empty, the WALL wants some action. So if they start handing out the cotton-candy for free, we know that the American entrepreneur marketing spirit has found a new high. But in Alaska, with new legislation that allows “Shot First then Ask” and a Tea-Party mentality, this may be just a routine Saturday, wherein nobody gets excited and when the excitement vanishes, shoppers can put away their concealed weapons and it is back to business. And you thought “our” streets were unsafe?