The center is distinctly not holding. We learn from inside sources, that for a year Super Wal-Mart has been slouching, rougher than any beast, toward the outskirts of Flagstaff. For what seems the zillionth time in five years, we call the zillionth meeting to stop the zillionaires from destroying our town. An exaggeration ... more like the hundredth meeting, the zillionaires mere billionaires, J. Robson Walton, heir of the Wal-Mart fortunes worth only $20 billion. Still, those of us who have loved our little mountain town for a lifetime and who have been watching with growing alarm ever since our town hit a population of 50,000 and the mega-corporations began to move in - we know what we are battling is destruction "coming at us from every point on the compass 24 hours a day, and the destroyers have nothing but time, money and greed..." to borrow the words of Bill Ehrhart, a poet.

We, as usual, send out press releases, as usual, put up posters, as usual, expect the same dozen die-hards. Most unusual, we open the library meeting room to three dozen unfamiliar folks. Old. Young. Anglo. Hopi. Retirees. Clerks and pet store owners. Working folks who are fed up with the results of their labor piling up exponentially in other people's bank accounts far from our home.

We talk. We listen. We hear that Super Wal-Mart, upon learning that one of their meat departments had unionized, promptly shut down all their meat departments throughout the country and began to buy pre-packaged products. Most of us already knew that many of the items sold on the Wal-Mart aisles come from off-shore and maquiladora sweat shop labor, but it is news that approximately half of Wal-Mart employees are eligible for food stamps because the median income of a Wal-Mart employee is about $12,000. We are told that many Wal-Mart workers are kept on part-time hours with no benefits.

We talk about the potential extinction of that endangered species, Local Business. But, it is not so much the grim facts and figures that catch my attention. It is the woman who announces she can't wait for Super Wal-Mart to get here. "I live on the east side of town and really resent having to drive to the west side for Wal-Mart. And, frankly, I never go downtown. Downtown is only for university people and tourists."

I miss much of what's said next, as I remember my afternoon downtown. I am blessed to be neither a university worker nor a tourist. I write six days a week, often seven, teach writing Monday and Wednesday evenings.My days of rest, aren't. Like most of us who haven't gotten lucky, I use my free time to catch up on chores. I am grateful that my years as a divorced and working mom are over. Those times make an afternoon of errands in downtown Flagstaff seem like play.

I'd begun at our state credit union, where Petra asked me how my novel was going. I cashed a check and headed over to Macy's, a decades-old coffee house next to a laundromat presided over by no-nonsense manager Mary. I got the wash going and settled in at an old wood table with fresh-roast coffee and paying bills, finished both by the time my wash was ready for the dryer.

I loaded it, walked two blocks for Dara Thai's elegant five-dollar red curry, ate and walked to the downtown post office. The clerk asked me how my novel was going. I stopped in at Winter Sun Trading Post for osha wild-crafted by a woman taught by Navajo, Hopi and Havasupai healers.

For ten bucks, Porter's jeweler fixed the catch on my late Mom's bracelet and attached a charm. I browsed through McGaugh's hundreds of magazines and stopped at Pesto Brothers for fresh mozzarella (which cost exactly the same as rubbery corpo-mozzarella.) The owner asked me how my novel was going.

Mary had folded my wash. For nothing but neighborliness. She asked how my novel was going. I stashed my wash in my truck and spent a half-hour at Aradia bookstore, gossiping, ordering a book on casino workers, watching the malamute and rez puppy tangle their leashes. As the light cooled, I picked up mushrooms and garlic for lasagna at Mountain Harvest and headed home.

Four hours. A mile of downtown streets. Thirty bucks. Priceless - a dozen conversations with my neighbors - in the coffee shop, at the bookstores, in the restaurant, post office and on the street. 

Sitting on my back porch eating lasagna, I felt nourished. Not just by silken mozzarella and fresh garlic, but by something deeper - a sense of being home, in the company of people who want to know how my work is going, and whose work and future, the twenty-four-seven of a local business, is very much my own. 

Super Downtown, I thought. A center we will hold. Super Wal-Mart, the battle's just begun.

Mary Sojourner is a professional writer whose work has appeared in High Country News, Flag Live!, The Arizona Daily Sun, and on National Public Radio, among others.