Do Pharmacists Sell Farms: A Trip Inside the Corner Drugstore Review
Do you remember standing in front of the pharmacist, trying to work up the nerve to ask him for that last essential item for tonight's big date? Or maybe staring at the home-permanent display, wondering, "Should I or shouldn't I?" Do you recall where these and other high altars of onrushing adulthood were located? The corner drugstore.
No small town was complete without one. Along with the grocery and the hardware store, the corner drugstore was one of the essential institutions a town needed. Vince Staten has already written about the first two of these in Can You Trust a Tomato in January? and Did Monkeys Invent the Monkey Wrench? In Do Pharmacists Sell Farms? Staten takes on the third in an effort to explore and capture the heart of this American institution before it disappears.
Staten takes us back to a time when the corner drugstore was the place where mothers met in the morning to trade gossip, where businessmen met in the afternoon to lunch and cut deals, and where teenagers gathered after school for a soda and a smile. It was also the place where many people had what their doctor was doing to them explained so they could actually understand it. But just as the town square has lost its luster and been replaced by the mall, the corner drugstore has given way to the superstore.
Return with us to the days when the soda jerk ruled the social scene and True Confessions was the hot magazine at the newsstand. Here Staten will walk you one last time through those narrow, cluttered aisles and answer many of the questions that have plagued customers since time immemorial. What is this V7 that makes Vitalis so wonderful? How does Grecian Formula know what color my hair used to be? What ever happened to Preparations A-G? Did Trojans use Trojans?
With inimitable style and wit, Staten offers the stories behind the salves, nostrums, and patent medicines that you could once find on every corner, giving us the secret histories of all the people, places, and above all, things that made up this centerpiece of Americana. So whether you're reliving your own memories or wishing to experience the sights and smells of the corner drugstore for the first time. Do Pharmacists Sell Farms? Is the next best thing to sitting at the counter sipping an ice cream soda on a sunny summer afternoon. Read more...
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Do Pharmacists Sell Farms: A Trip Inside the Corner Drugstore Specifications
The corner drugstore used to be a prescription for happiness in America. Sweethearts met at the soda fountain after school, kids picked out penny candy, and when you needed a certain medicine refilled, it was a friend and neighbor who did the work. But with the arrival of shopping malls and national discount chains, the Main Street drugstore has almost disappeared from the American landscape.
In Do Pharmacists Sell Farms?, author Vince Staten provides a folksy and funny account of the social history of pharmacies and their products, along with some sober and revealing lessons about marketing and business. What Staten, a freelance writer, did for hardware stores in a previous book, Did Monkeys Invent the Monkey Wrench?, he does for the corner drugstore in this book. Instead of zeroing in on hammers and nails, Staten takes an intriguing look at the evolution of the drugstore products we now take for granted, such as sanitary napkins and toothpaste. For example, did you know it was an accident that helped make Ivory soap so popular? One day, a Procter & Gamble worker goofed and mixed in too much air to a batch of the famous soap. Some mishap. The customers loved the way the soap popped up in their bath water--they wanted more of "the soap that floats," something that P & G was happy to supply.
In many ways, the corner drugstore grew up with America's increasingly consumer- and market-driven economy. But it has also become victim to the same forces, with the rise of McDonald's leading to the decline of the drugstore soda fountain. While the book is a funny valentine to corner drugstores, it isn't a "With Deepest Sympathy" card (yes, greeting cards are another item Staten describes). As he concludes, "This is the final chapter in this book. But it's only the first chapter in the saga of the corner drugstores, the opening act in a struggle to see if any semblance of drugstores as we knew them and loved them can survive." --Dan Ring
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