The Hidden Origins of Wal-Mart

Last evening after work, while waiting for a friend at The Wobblie Wonk on Rivington Street, I had an extended conversation with a 62-year old Scotsman named Fergus McWilley. Sporting dark blue early Roger McGuinn sunglasses perched on the tip of his nose and dressed in a vintage black and white Harris Tweed blazer, a pair of red velvet bellbottoms custom made for him by Mary Quant (in one of her rare forays into men's fashion), and a classic tone-on-tone white high roll dress shirt from a long-gone Carnaby Street shop, Fergus looked like he had just stepped out of a fashion shoot circa 1966. Here's one strand of his exegesis. He was telling me about being a scholar, specializing in the history of magic, with reciprocal library privileges at Hogwarts, where he stumbled upon a heretofore hidden history of Voldemort's family, including extensive narrative purporting to be about Voldemort's previously unidentified descendents, the best known of whom is Sam Voldemort, who emigrated to the U.S. at age sixteen. Disguised as a muggle, he established a dry goods store in Arkansas. Around the time of the World War I anti-German hysteria he changed his name from Sam Voldemort to Sam Walton, and the name of his store from Volde-Mart to Wal-Mart. Fergus ended this portion of the conversation by asking: "Now, if this is true, is it any wonder that Wal-Mart treats its workers so shabbily? How would you feel working for a miserable pittance and knowing that all of your hard and underpaid labor is just going to further enrich the descendents of You Know Who?"