First job at the Village Pharmacy

 

I've mentioned in a previous blog that I had an English professor, Sandra Humble Johnson, who taught us the concept of landscape. This concept went beyond "landscape" in literature, to personal landscapes. It was the idea that sometimes a person moves and discovers a new place in the world that speaks to them, resonate with them so much, they might stay there the rest of their lives. Even if it's a place the writer has lived all their life, or not, their love and passion for that landscape pervades their writing. 

This came up with Louise Erdrich. Anyway, I have been thinking about landscape a lot lately, even before the pandemic. Ohio might not be the jazziest place to live. The weather be often awful and changeable. And yet I love it so much. Maybe it's because I've never known anything different. Maybe it's because my closest family is here. Maybe I just don't like change. I seem able to find good things in every season, and even when I go on trips to lovely,  beautiful places that I adore...I long for home. Maybe that's just for my own bed but one time I remember we came back from a trip and at the Columbus airport, I found myself gulping the humid air with pleasure.

When I have been thinking about landscape recently, whether it's the tall hill on Stringtown road that seemed impossibly steep when I was ten and riding my first really "big girl bike," or the neighbors house where I used to pet-sit for my very first job as a kid, I wonder what it is about this time that has me going back to these memories. Is it the times or my age or both? Anyway, I've been meaning to write about this sign, that I took before it changed into "the Happy Druggist."

The Village Pharmacy is definitely a place that has been a touchpoint in the landscape of my life. John Canestraro bought it from Mr. Webster and I think he owned it for over 40 years. The Indian Dairy Bar has come and gone under various names. Grandma's Pizza is after many manifestations after it's initial sale, "Ronato's" and Chet's IGA is gone after a fire, a move, and a closure. But the Village Pharmacy, miraculously was sold to another local pharmacist and business owner specializing in independent pharmacies. If John had sold it to CVS or the like it would have surely been closed. But here we are still with a local pharmacy in the one traffic light town of Mechanicsburg.


I got my first antibiotic from John and the Village Pharmacy when I was six and the only first grader to contract scarlet fever. I remember my grandparents Perdue were visiting one evening and I showed my mom this rash I noticed on my skin. I remember my Grandma sounding sure and serious "she's got scarlet fever, give her toast soaked in milk." I still remember that. I googled "toast in milk scarlet fever" and apparently this was a home remedy as a dietary support listed in a few books from the late 1890s to the early 1900s. Mom and Dad thought that was preposterous that I would have scarlet fever in the early 1980s but the rash stayed the next morning. Off we went to the pediatric office in Springfield. Dr. Leahy who took my temperature, looked in my ears, looked at my pantsless legs covered in rash and said, yep scarlet fever. I was the only first grader to get it at that time, God only knows where I picked it up. I remember the rash, I remember Dad coming back from the Village Pharmacy with my antibiotic...and a Sesame street book, Nobody Cares About Me! I still have that title in my box of childhood books I've kept. The plot is that Big Bird gets jealous of someone else who is sick, pretends to be sick, and then, actually gets sick.

 I had only had liquid orange Triaminic, liquid Tylenol, and the coveted cherry Luden's cough drops and I regarded the antibiotic with intrigue and wariness. Within a day I was also covered in hives. Guess who is allergic to penicillin? Another trip to the Village Pharmacy, two new medicines, one antibiotic and another for the hives. I remember the hive medicine was purple and smelled awful...skin-crawlingly awful. In college the first rum and coke I smelled reminded me of that medicine and I was like, No. Thanks. Strep throat and ear infections throughout my childhood occasionally warranted another trip the pharmacy.

The summer I turned 15 I wanted a job. A year around job. Real jobs for teenagers were hard to come by in Mechanicsburg. There was Grandma's Pizza run by the beloved Mrs. "Wass" Nancy Wasserman. I was intimidated by the late hours though on the weekends and the large hot oven that delivered the best pizza in the world. There was the Indian Dairy bar but that was seasonal and I had a feeling that I wasn't really cut out for food service. The only other year round gig was Chet's IGA but there were only a few teen positions, baggers, and they were almost always boys. This was in an era when they loaded the groceries in the car for you. That left...the Village Pharmacy.


Urbana was only 10 miles and minutes away, but when I turned 15 Wal-Mart hadn't opened yet, and the new Kroger might not have been open either or just recently. Even though there was more jobs there was also more competition in Urbana. Like Grandma's Pizza hours,  I wasn't down with working at say Kroger or Blockbuster until 10 or 11 at night. Besides, one needed a car to get to Urbana, and to have a car, you need to make enough money to maintain it, and even though I was getting my learner's permit, a job in Urbana seemed too large scale and ambitious. The Village Pharmacy was the premiere place to work. I'm not just saying that because I'm biased. Year around, out of the elements, great if limited hours to work, and I could walk down after school and get picked up by Mom or Dad and/or have use of a car as it was available. The Pharmacy wasn't hard labor, so I  could save that for all the animals I was raising on the farm and powering through schoolwork, including going to college part-time. BUT the Village Pharmacy only needed a handful of high school students at a time as adults worked business hours. The pharmacy was open 9 to 6:30 Monday through Friday and when I worked there, 9 to 3 on weekends. Now it's 9-6 and 9-1 on Saturdays.

I was lucky that a family friend had worked there in high school and put in a good word for me. I started the summer I turned 15 and man, that first job experience. This was back when the pharmacy did dry cleaning intake, sold cigarettes, had film drop off and pick up, shoe repair, sold watch batteries and had a large selection of magazines, greeting cards, small gifts, boxed chocolates, and snack foods. This was before dollar general type stores, and when I worked at the pharmacy, the "Burg One" gas station/convenience store was really new. 

New hires started on the register and this was overwhelming for a few months. Credit cards had to be ran on the little plastic slide machine to run over carbon copies. I was sure one of these days I was going to accidentally pop the credit card up while sliding and shred it. You had to really put your elbow into it to imprint all three copies of the carbon. 

Sorting people's dry cleaning for intake could get a little awkward. 

I remember one busy Saturday morning I was still new to the register and one of my high school teachers, Mr. Franz came in. I can't remember the details but for some reason this transaction was more complex than most of what I had done before. It was probably the first of the month (one of the busiest times at a pharmacy because of government benefits so lots and lots of refills happen then.) I had messed up ringing stuff up and Mr. Franz was trying to help me I think by suggesting paying the difference on something and it had all turned into a horrible real life word problem with a line of people behind and I remember being so embarrassed and feeling so dumb. I wanted to say "Oh Mr. Franz don't you know how bad I am at math."

But instead B high school student, co-worker, and my good friend to this very day came up and rescued me. At one point she tried to explain it to me, but she just did it and we got everybody moved along. I got better as time went. 

Working Saturdays... man. No matter the weather, working on a Saturday always feels like a rainy day and it featured the most loathed chore by all youth working at the pharmacy...vacuuming.  We all had to take turns and no one wanted to do it. The vacuum was this silver and orange plastic behemoth that probably only weighed 10 pounds but felt like 20. There weren't many outlets in the store so you had to wrangle not only this large stand up vacuum but also the seemingly miles and miles of extension cord. There is a lower level of the pharmacy that's just two steps on either end of the retail part of the room. SO then you had to drag the vacuum up and down these two stairs. We would argue and wheedle, and who did it last week etc. D was the only guy working there besides the pharmacists and he'd insist he shouldn't have to do it just because he "was the boy" and I don't remember the "but you are so big and strong" line particularly working. 

After working for a year or so, I got promoted to the pharmacy section. This meant answering the phone and taking down names and numbers for refills. This meant putting labels on bottles, and even counting pills. If this sounds a little shocking to think that 16, 17, and 18 year-olds were working as pharmacy techs I don't know what to tell you. For someone who couldn't stand math I did all right counting pills in fives or tens. This will not surprise anyone who has ever seen me try to open any kind of packaging...I wasn't very good at putting the labels on straight. We had customers sign the clipboard for their prescriptions, pages and pages of handwritten print names and their accompanying signatures on a clipboard...all done electronically now. I remember John had a dot matrix printer and a tv tuned to the new all news station CNN, like all the time. We had something pre-internet, tied into the phone system I think. It was more than just software on a single computer and when it went down, God help us. And if often went down on the first of the month or so, the entire system strained from whatever it was connected to by the massive amounts of refills ordered. Stressful for the customers too, who were forced onto this tight refill schedule because of their first of the month checks. 

I enjoyed this job so much. When you stick with a first job for a couple or three years it really enables the arch of learning to becoming an expert and soon I was training teens a couple years behind me, first on the register and then in the back.Those ahead of me went to college, and may come and work over Christmas break or fill in on a weekend if they were home and John was in a bind. The junior becomes the senior. 

And then there were deliveries. 

Oh deliveries, let me tell you how we all loved to do deliveries. 

Deliveries were a special service at no extra charge, to customers, nearly always senior citizens, many weren't driving much or at all. Around 5:30 or 6 depending on the number of deliveries and how busy we were at the store, one of us would take the three, four or five deliveries to the homes in town or at the very edge of town. Since Darren didn't drive that meant more turns for the rest of us with cars. Deliveries were the best because you were essentially paid to drive around town. Talk about feeling grown up and important. This was past the time that most of the after school cruising was done but you would still see a few people out and about. Violet Blue would give me a candy bar like Milky Way as a tip. Brandy's grandma was on the delivery route and she would tip you a dollar. My favorite part...and again those who know me well and know how much I love a hot lunch at work, was the lovely cooking smells and meals the seniors were fixing around the time I would arrive. I remember Mrs. Arnett would have the CBS evening news on and would be cooking up a storm. I would go to the Village Apartments for a couple deliveries. These were senior apartments in long ranch style buildings. The buildings were always warm and stuffy and smelled like onions but damn, it was still a little cozy.

There were less glamorous jobs like breaking down cardboard boxes and assembling vials and caps when our boxes got low. On slow days we would read magazines and once in a while we would do inventory with a hand held scanner that again, pre-internet...more phone based would message to our supplier what over the counter items we needed to restock. As I think about all the stuff we did and our brains weren't fully developed yet, God love John for training us and putting up with us. All in all, it was a pretty sweet high school job. 

Things change, but sometimes you can come home again...in a way. John retired in the fall of 2019...but he held out and rather than be sold out by a big chain and sold the business to Mechanicsburg High School graduates Joe and Robin Craft...Joe is several years older than me, but I went to Urbana University with his younger brother Aaron. The Crafts have several independent pharmacies and the Village Pharmacy is now the Happy Druggist. They've changed the floor plan around, repainted, added a new sign and installed a bigger stair/ramp at the front door. The Happy Druggist did a real solid for me the other day, but that's a story for another time. 

Recently retired History teacher Mr. Neer announced that he's working part-time doing deliveries and that really made me smile. 

 And this also made me smile. If any of the employees saw me snap a picture of this a few months ago, well now you know why. It looks a lot lighter than the orange contraption I had to drag around.