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COPYRIGHT 2005 The Dallas Morning News
Byline: Maria Halkias
Oct. 30--MOUNT PLEASANT, Texas -- "How thick do you want your steaks cut?" Don Boggs asks a shopper as he pulls an apron over his Texas A&M cap.
He knows his BP convenience store is giving the customer a choice that she doesn't have across town at the Wal-Mart Supercenter.
Small-town Texas hasn't been the same since Wal-Mart Stores
Inc. arrived in the state 30 years ago -- Nov. 11, 1975 -- with a store in Mount Pleasant.
The query about cuts of beef speaks volumes about how the world's largest retailer has transformed Texas, its largest market.
Competitors, employees and shoppers in Mount Pleasant say Wal-Mart is intertwined in their lives, for better and for worse.
And after 30 years, they've learned to adapt -- to a cornucopia of consumer goods once unavailable in rural areas, to new jobs that still pay little more than the minimum wage, to a relentless cost-cutter that squeezes smaller rivals.
"You don't compete with the bear; you feed it and live off the rest," said Mr. Boggs, an entrepreneur who lives by that mantra.
He owns a meat-packing plant, and his convenience store has a full-service, fresh meat case. (Wal-Mart sells only pre-packaged meats.) He sells gasoline from his store. (It's on the opposite side of town from Wal-Mart's pumps.) He owns a full-service florist with his wife. (Wal-Mart stocks flowers but doesn't do weddings or funerals.)
Tracing Wal-Mart's history in Texas is, in many ways, like tracing the history of the company itself. The state has been a battleground with other retailers, a training venue for key Wal-Mart managers and the site of an important labor showdown.
Texas also offers insights to the company's future as it consolidates its rural beachheads and continues advancing deeper into Dallas-Fort Worth and other urban areas.
Here in Mount Pleasant, the Texans who have lived the longest with Wal-Mart have watched it morph from small-town discounter to global titan. And they've changed, too.
"I'm still here because I want to be. You can compete if you try," said Jim Mason, the third generation in his family to operate a local hardware store.
From Boy Scout uniforms to a bridal registery, Mason's True Value Hardware offers what Wal-Mart doesn't, operating "more like a general store." It even moved from the courthouse square to a larger location in 1989.
"Truth is, we all shop at Wal-Mart. I do. My wife does. I see all my friends...
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