While local forces grapple with the possibility of a 123,000-square-foot Walmart in Atascadero, I was upset to read that the Arkansas-based retailer wants to use the ballot box to muscle its way into communities.

I’ve only had about three new cars since I got my driver’s license back in 1956. For some reason I have just purchased used cars and trucks. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate new vehicles; I have never had the money to plunk down on one.

Nothing takes the fun out of something more than finding out it is actually good for you.

Just when I think I know all the answers to questions asked about Atascadero’s history, I find out I don’t. I dropped by the Atascadero Historical Society’s museum recently and John and Bobbie Barta, our senior docents, said a man was there asking where Tarantula Hill was located.

I received overwhelming support following last week’s column, wherein I chided the Colony Days Committee for what appears to be an arbitrary method of deciding who gets to participate in the annual parade.

Five years ago, a group calling itself Oppose Wal-Mart was told it couldn’t have an entry in the Colony Days Parade. The grassroots organization was told its parade entry didn’t fit in with the spirit of the community celebration.

With Atascadero’s Colony Days celebration slipping away for another year, I want to pen one more thought about the community’s founder, E.G. Lewis.

We’ve been following the career of Doriana Sanchez since she graduated from Atascadero High School. She was the girl in the black polka dot dress in “Dirty Dancing” and finally co-creator, choreographer and director to Cher’s “Believe” and “Living Proof” tours and the singer’s performances at the Coliseum at Caesars Las Vegas.

Monday marked the 100th anniversary of the day women won the right to vote in California. Atascadero’s founder, Edward Gardner Lewis, had not established his newest community in California yet. But in the spring of 1910, at University City — which had been created by Lewis on the outskirts of St. Louis, Mo. — he hosted 1,000 suffragists at the first national convention of the American Woman’s League.

In the late 1950s or very early 1960s a group of local senior citizens built themselves a building on a lot near Atascadero Lake. The AARP Building (Atascadero Association of Retired People) has been a fixture on that site ever since, even as the city of Atascadero has made improvements all around it.