Drugstores
Soda Fountain, Baltimore Museum of Industry
The Wayback Machine was kicked into overdrive when I started thinking about Huron College. Our teen years are usually indelibly imprinted or forever erased, I have some of both. Do you remember “Soda Fountains?” I am pretty sure that my first “date” was to a soda fountain, 7th grade, I think. I had a crush on a girl named Mary and asked her to join me after school for a soda at the drugstore. And…she did!! I very distinctly remember being nervous as hell but also wanting to show how cool and sophisticated I was so I ordered a chocolate coke. Chocolate syrup in the bottom of the glass, cola drawn from the tap at the bar, and a long straw to stir and sip. Yep…I was cool. Not. I was 13 years old and imaginative.
The drug store was Miller’s Drugstore in the 300 block of Dakota Avenue, next door (I think) to Smith Jewelry. Miller’s was the epitome of an old time drug store, not like today’s CVS, Walgreen’s, etc. I remember four drugstores in town, Miller’s, Humphrey’s (of Hubert fame), Lewis Drug, and Perriton Drug & Jewelry. In Miller’s, there were shelves of health paraphernalia, a pharmacist in a caged enclosure, and a magnificent soda fountain with ice creams, sodas, sprinkles, and other sweet magic things. If I remember correctly, Humphrey’s also had a “snack bar” but it was not the classic Soda Fountain. My date and I sipped on our exotic sodas and I probably quivered like a leaf in the wind, but it was fun, and, memorable. We had one more “date” like this and then either her mother or mine changed the ground rules and after school hours became more “regimented.”
Today’s drugstores are different. The world is different. We are an aging population. Health science has increased exponentially. To keep us oldsters alive, mobile, and alert, drugs are imperative and so pharmacies today are crushed with demand as well as diversity of available medications. Remember when pharmacists had time to talk with their customers? Not so much anymore in chain pharmacies. The retail margins are so low in the industry that some pharmaceutical technician salaries are barely above minimum wage. Pharmacists often “supervise” four or so technicians who are actually pulling the pills and doing the insurance process. I understand the burnout rate for pharmacists and their technicians is increasing…they are slammed by demand and the chains can’t charge more than insurance allows and insurers negotiate huge discounts…which is a completely different post. Anyway. I empathize with pharmacists, they’re under extreme pressure in the middle of an extraordinarily complex process among Pharma, doctors, corporate, and lastly…us.
But, I had that date. Terror, excitement…oh, what a time. Smile.