| Joe's
Drugs Ronnie Dee (c) Copyright 2025 by Ronnie Dee 
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 Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.. |
Before I got a real job, and even after, for a while, I worked at Joe's Pharmacy for a few months. That was a trip. Joe, the pharmacist and owner of the store, was a good guy and put up with a lot from me and the other neighborhood kids. Joe kept me pretty busy and his father would come in often and make sure I didn't have any idle minutes. One day I got him good. He was kind of a busybody and I was in the stockroom when the old man was there and as he passed by, he shut the door. I always left it open because there was no knob on the inside. He saw the open door and just had to shut it. So I said, "What the Hell," and figured I would lie down on the cot Joe kept in there and see how long it would take them to find me.
It was fun. I could hear them hollering for me and discussing where I might be and it was about forty five minutes before the old man looked in the stockroom, and there I was. "Why didn't you call out?" They asked.
So I told them, "I wanted to see how long it would take you to find me." What could they say?
I even got to be a soda jerk for a while. I liked that. The hardest thing for me to do was make an ice cream cone. I mean the ice cream was always as hard as a brick which made it difficult to scoop out. Then, when I tried to put it in a cone, the cone would get crushed. Joe took me off of that duty when he caught me making giant banana splits and sundaes for my friends during the gala Grand Opening!
He featured a rack of the latest 45 rpm records and I kept my collection up to date by slipping one in my shirt each time we added a new selection. I felt justified because my pay was minimal and this was just too easy. I mean, there I was with a dozen copies of the newest Little Richard hit in my hands, the temptation was just too great. Like the fox tending the chickens, as it were.
Joe had a fairly new brown Ford convertible which he used to make drug deliveries. It was cool and I loved washing it for him. I was practicing driving in reverse in the parking lot one evening and it was empty when I started, but soon began to fill up. This went unnoticed by me and I was chatting with some pals when I suddenly zoomed backwards into the last empty parking space. I could tell instantly by the look on their faces that that space wasn't empty anymore, but before I could do anything about it, I slammed into a car.
It so happened that the car was a recent purchase by some kid I only slightly knew. He had just bought his first car and was very proud of it. I thought, "Uh-oh, this might cause some trouble," but when he came running out of the drug store, I thought he was going to faint.
"Ah, don't worry", I told him. "Joe's got insurance and they can fix it up like new."
The guy was upset, but wasn't angry with me, much to my relief. I don't even know if he knew who had been driving. Fortunately, Joe's insurance got the car repaired. There was minimal damage to the Ford.
Another day after Joe had bought an old chevy for deliveries, he sent me on a delivery. When I got to the street, it was torn to pieces. They were repaving the whole thing and it was a sea of mud. Again, without thinking, I plunged right through the middle and got stuck solid. I waded through the mud and made the delivery. Then I went to a telephone booth and called Joe to tell him the news. Thirty minutes later, here comes three guys who had been hanging out at the store, to help me get out of the mud. We all had a good laugh at that one. The car was mired up to the door level.
The guys went back and gave Joe the news and he had to send a wrecker to yank the car out of the mud. He was exasperated about that one. All for a $2.38 prescription.
That may have been the last straw, because he soon after bought an official delivery vehicle. A brand new, closed in Jeep with the pharmacy's name scrawled all over it. I loved zipping around in the new Jeep and sometimes I would take a friend or two with me on deliveries.
One time Jack and Bud were with me and we saw a box sitting in the back area of the Jeep with a supply of clean, white pharmacist's smocks. Naturally we had to put them on. When making a delivery, we would all three go up to the door and when the customer opened it, I would say, "May I have the prescription doctor," and one or the other would hand the bag to me and say, "Certainly doctor," and I would reply, "Thank you doctor," and hand the person their medicine. Then someone would say, "Shall we go, doctors," and we would leave.
When we got back to the store, Joe was waiting and read me the riot about wearing the smocks and annoying the customers. He forbade any more passengers on deliveries. He claimed that he had received complaints, and maybe he had. You know, some people just don't want to have any fun.
A few months after I retired from the pharmacy business, some guys were hanging out in the parking lot as we often did, when we heard a terrific crash. Some of us ran into the back door of the store and a few went around the side to see what was going on.
The store sat on a corner and somebody had crashed their vehicle right through the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows. When we saw what it was, we stared in disbelief. It was the delivery Jeep, with Joe's Pharmacy scrawled all over it sitting inside the store amidst glass and debris. The new kid driving had taken the corner too fast and literally drove right into the store. I felt somehow vindicated. At least I didn't have anything to do with it that time.