By CHARLES FERRUZZA
As readers of Fat City know, I’ve been on a mission to find the last remaining drug stores that still have soda fountains. So far, I’ve had excellent chocolate malts and cheeseburgers at the Fox Drug Store in Raytown and ice cream sodas at the Corner Pharmacy in Leavenworth. I recently discovered the Georgetown Pharmacy, located in a nondescript building (blink and you’ll miss it – seriously!) at 5605 Merriam Drive. A co-worker of mine noticed it one day and encouraged me to check it out. I was in my car the very next day.
A visit to the “Old Time Soda Fountain & Espresso Shop” is certainly the only reason I’d ever want to visit the Georgetown Pharmacy, which bears absolutely no resemblance to any drug store I know of.
I didn’t see a greeting card, a bottle of mouthwash, a toothbrush, condoms, People magazine or a box of Russell Stover chocolates anywhere. I did see a lot of prosthetic devices, though. There’s probably a story there, but I don’t want to know what it is. (The pharmacy is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday.)
Anyway, the lady at the cash register pointed to the back of the store, where the much cheerier and brighter soda fountain was overseen by two clean-cut teenagers. Both young men looked happy and healthy and one had a tidy 1960s brush cut, like a character from Leave it to Beaver.
When I visited the soda fountain, two teens were perched at the counter drinking Green River sodas, a staple of prohibition-era drugstores, when a lot of Midwestern breweries resorted to making soda pop. The drink’s vibrant green color (it’s the same shade of Palmolive dishwashing soap) has always intimidated me. “What’s it taste like?” I asked one of the soda jerks. “Like Sprite, without the lemon,” he said.
The cheeseburgers, brats and hot dogs on the lunch menu (“all sandwiches served on a Kaiser roll unless specified”) are cooked over a little grill on a patio just outside the building.
I wanted to order a chocolate malt, but I balked at paying 55 cents more for than the price of a milkshake. A milkshake costs $3.95, but a malt is at $4.50.
“The cost of malt powder has more than doubled,” said the brush-cut soda jerk. “It’s gone from, like, $3 a container to $8!”
“What’s it made with,” I asked, “gasoline?”
The answer, I found out later, is powdered milk, wheat flour and non-diastatic malt powder. Recent price increases for milk and roasted barley (used to make malt flour for ice cream drinks and beer) have forced even soda fountains to pass on the costs to us consumers. Outrageous!
It was a delicious milkshake, though, and a first-rate hot dog. I’m saving my allowance to go back for a malt.
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I love the Georgetown pharmacy! Simply the best place in town to get a shake, and the only place to get a vanilla phosphate, egg cream, or green river! I have heard many wistful stories from the mouths of grandparents about days during their youth, meeting up with friends at the corner drug store. This place draws the most amazing people just as a soda fountain is meant to. Your kids need to see this!
We have recently published a book on drug store soda fountains that are still open around the southeast that you might be interested in reading: Monk-Tutor M and Tutor T. Drug Store Soda Fountains of the Southeast. Circleville, OH: Health Care Logistics, 2008 (available at gmpgifts.com).
Thanks, Mary Monk-Tutor
Samford University McWhorter School of Pharmacy, Birimingham, AL, 35229. 205-726-2896. mrmonktu@samford.edu
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