Saturday Night in Wal Mart’s Parking Lot (PDF)
It was chilly and had been raining and the high overhanging pole lighting of the parking lot illuminated the empty rain slick asphalt, and the solitary man. He was moving purposefully around a small red and white circus tent and an equally diminutive trailer painted in the same colors, that was parked nearby. In an age when conformity is valued, and megacorporations often define the terms of a person’s employment, he seemed to me a wonderfully American example of how a man with a special skill can still find a sustaining niche.
Mark Crane is from Gainesville, Florida. He often works as a truck driver but, about every other week, he takes his six ponies out in the handmade red and white stall trailer, with his dogs and some hot coffee, and drives to a place where he can set up his pony ride. I first saw him just after midnight on a Saturday night in the Wal Mart parking lot in Commerce, Georgia. I had decided to stop there and spend the night.
I had never been in a Wal Mart until my wife Hayden and I bought a used Bluebird Wanderlodge, a kind of motorhome built by the company that also makes yellow school buses.
