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In a parking lot outside a big box retailer in a minor Midwestern city I looked around. I could see a few other big chain stores in the midst of strip mall storefronts. The smaller buildings of national chain restaurants stuck up like islands in the larger sea of parking.
I realized, looking at a retail store a few hundred yards from the store I just walked out of, I couldn't walk between the two if I wanted to. At least, not without braving the multiple lanes of traffic in both directions on the arteries cutting through this parking plain. This seems to be a quintessentially American scenario, if perhaps not uniquely American.
A more uniquely American experience came a couple days previously, when a trip to a Super Wal-Mart (the only grocer in town) was preceded by a stop at the gun shop.