by Pauline Stevenson Gilpin
I worked for Roma Gilpin at the drugstore from 1948 to 1954. I worked either the day shift from eight to four or the night shift from four to eleven, or later depending on when the store closed. My salary was $15 a week.
The drugstore was the hub of activity in town, a place you could count on, a place that would be open seven days a week from early morning to late at night. Local people spent many happy hours there, shopping, visiting, lunching, or waiting for rides. Young people brought their dates there for a sundae or a soda after the movies. If someone needed medicine in the middle of the night, they would call Mrs. Gilpin and she would open up and get it for them. Everyone loved and respected her. When the high school kids got rowdy all she had to do was walk out of her living quarters and into the store and in an instant they would quiet down.
There was a wood-framed glass candy case with glass shelves in the center near the entrance. Three shelves had small glass dishes that held penny candy—Root Beer Barrels, Red Hots, Sugar Babies, Malted Milk Balls, Mary Janes, B.B. Bats, Taffy Pops, and wax figures with sweet syrup inside. Candy bars had two shelves, and cough drops and gum had one. During the lunch hour the small children would come first with their pennies, and some would be on their knees pondering on what to buy. Mrs. Gilpin would come out and wait on them. Sometimes she had to help them decide. That left us free to wait on the older students at the fountain.
Before the kids came over from school during the lunch hour, we made dozens of ice cream sandwiches. We cut each pint of ice cream into four slices and put them between waffles and put them in the freezer so they’d be ready. It would be packed with students wanting ice cream cones, pie, sodas, sundaes, and so forth. Candy bars, cough drops, gum, Popsicles, Orange Blossoms, Banjos, and single-dip ice cream cones were five cents. If the Banjo stick said Free on it, you got a free one. Hot dogs and double-dip ice cream cones were ten cents. A slice of pie was 15 cents. Hamburgers, ice cream sodas, milk shakes, and ice cream sundaes were 25 cents.
When the school kids were away on bus trips to basketball games or some other event, usually a Wednesday or a Friday night, she would keep the store open until they returned, even if it was after midnight. Some of the parents would wait inside, and some of the kids would use the pay-phone to call home for their parents to come and get them. We waited until they came and all the kids were finally gone.
One experience I remember happened on a Fair Saturday when the store was packed. The tables and the fountain were full, and I was the only one there. We had run out of clean dishes so I was at the sink washing dishes. All of a sudden there was a loud pop, like a gunshot, and I was drenched in dishwater. It was dripping from my hair and face. Some people were so scared they left the store. Apparently, the handle of the ice cream dipper was filled with gas and when I took it from the cold water into the hot, it exploded! I just dried off my face and kept right on working.
Note: This is an excerpt from an article that first appeared in The Greene Hills of Home, Vol. 28, No. 4.