This summer I spent a few days in Zion Canyon, Utah. It’s a beautiful place carved into a seemingly lifeless desert. I think of the pioneers that first saw Zion and what their life was life back then: the brazen forays of the early adventurers giving way to paths, then roads, then settlements with churches and general stores filled with those things needed to sustain those traveling through. The company stores were brick and mortar affairs (or perhaps timber and adobe) owned and operated by moms-and-pops (I think of the TV character “Mr. Oleson”) eventually selling out to regional then national concerns when their “juniors” opted to ply another profession. The national stores with names like “Woolworths” and “JC Penney” occupied spaces with newer constructions, now steel framed, replete with nice carpeting and fluorescent lighting. Yet, these places were the natural extension of the moms-and-pops, carrying inventory and filling shelves with items deemed necessary by those purchasing. And so it has been for decades upon centuries and continues…until now.