Christmas spirit, all year around
There’s a man I know, still alive, who was, for me, the coolest sonofabitch alive.
He had one arm missing at the elbow. That’s the initial reason I thought he was cool, because he had lost it as a waist gunner in a PBY (or so rumor had it, I never actually asked him) He was only 16 when ww2 broke out, but he lied about his age and enlisted anyway. He saw some hard action, according to whispered conversations overheard in our house. See, we rented a house from him for many years, and eventually bought the house across the street, as he wanted to keep the rental property.
Anyway, he’d come back from the war, went to schol and began his business on the GI bill.
I won’t name him, as he’s still alive, and deserves the solitude of his old age.
He was our local pharmacist. In our town there was one pharmacy and two grocery stores; the groceries were owned by the same men who had one on each side of town, and the pharmacy was about dead center in between them. The pharmacy was the closest to our house, so if you needed a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk or a box of tampons, this was the place we could ride our bikes to to pick them up. It was the place where we dragged our red wagons full of empties picked up along the road for the nickel deposit.
The pharmacy was a Rexall, if anyone here remembers the chain. It was a tiny building with a raised platform in back for the pharmacist, who was the only medical care available for about 40% of the population there. People would come in and ask him about their sick child, or family member, or sometimes even dog, and he would listen carefully and direct them to an OTC remedy that would help them, often giving it to them at cost, because if they didn’t have the scratch for a doctor, they didn’t have the scratch for a scrip.
I would not be surprised to discover he dispensed meds without a scrip for people in actual need. He would probably be arrested and spend a lot of time in the stripey hole for that these days, but back then, as I said, he was the only game in town for the indigent.
As often as not, the people who came to him were family members of drunks, or the worthless, but he treated them all the same, without judging them, and did the best he could. I personally know at leat twice when he closed his door and dragged someone to the emergency room because they were in need, leaving customers standing in line with only the explanation “I have to take Bill to the hospital, I’ll be back in an hour”. Not one person ever complained. In hindsight, hindsight being what it is, I think he’s the coolest because he did all this because he was a good man.
CVS and Walgreens have that busness now. No more people like our small town pharmacist exist around here, anymore, but I remember our Good Samaritan pharmacist, and now that I’ve seen his picture on Facebook, I’ll send him a note and say hello, and thank him for his service, and wish him a merry Christmas. And hope the Creator can help me to be a bit more like that.
That’s the thing that mom & pop’s will always have over chains. My aunt used to live in an apartment block that had a store in the front. She’d send one of my cousin’s for a bread or milk, and the owner would put it on their account, which got paid come payday. That was also back in the days when tenants stayed put for years. You go to a pharmacist, and he knows your and your family’s medical history (and allergies), so you can stop in and tell him you got this or that, and he can do a good job getting you something without you having to pay $xxx for a doctor visit and $xxx for a scrip. I like my indie auto parts stores like Merrillville’s Pacesetter or Gary’s C&L for if I have a car problem, they’ve been able to tell me if I’m getting the right thing, or if the problem is further back, and I need A&B fixed before I fix C for the third time this month. Corporate chains have such micromanagement rules tighter than a gnat’s butt to where the person you’re dealing with might want to improvise a bit (since they have the experience and brains to see what you need), but can’t lest they get caught and written up or canned. Also, back when local banks owned the mortgages, if you got laid off or were on strike, Gary National or Steel City Federal knew you’d go back soon enough and could work with you so you wouldn’t lose your house in that temporary situation.
We should all be like that pharmacist, even if we work in a big corporation. Tonight, I asked management if we could allow one of our members (I work for a member’s only “wholesale” club) to stay in the store for a while after closing so I could finish printing his order, as he needed the prints for his mother’s funeral tomorrow.
The closing manager, who desperately wanted to leave as early as possible for very good reasons of her own, said “of course!”, as simply as that.
If the corporation you work for won’t let you be a human being while you do your job, maybe you work for the wrong corporation.
This is the kind of thing that can change the world for the better, not higher taxes filtered through an inefficient burocracy delivered to only those who are judged deserving by the people who want their votes.
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