The Corner Drugstore

The corner drugstore was exactly that, located at the corner of our street, about a ten minute walk with our little legs. It sat smug with importance next to a bakery, barber shop, and Chinese restaurant. Quite often I was tasked with running up to the store to solve an impending crisis; scraped knees, head aches, belly aches and with babies always around colic. All the remedies could be found in that small square footage store and much more. I would take my list and the money and most often be told to keep the change. That was the good part. That was in fact the big motivator, because there was a lot more to the corner drug store than boring medicinal cures.
I would hand my list to the pharmacist as he piled it up with others and began my delightful peruse of the rest of the store.
There was a soda fountain with stools that could spin around, even if your feet did not reach the ground. Over the counter you could see the shiny apparatus that blended ice-cream into wonderful milk shakes, and cabinets, and ice cream sodas. The ice cream was housed in a container with gleaming stainless steel tops labeled vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. I would watch with gleeful eyes as he would scoop out the ice cream, put it into a glass dish, load it with whipped cream, sprinkle it with nuts, and gingerly place a cherry on top. There was just as much ceremony when a banana split was created in a banana shaped glass dish, made expressly for the treat. I lived in a state where Eclipse coffee syrup was made so I got to order my favorite flavored coffee cabinet. I remember well how very rich and creamy it was, and there was always some left in the stainless canister which would be added to my glass as I depleted the contents.
Drugstores were so much more than a retail outlet, they were the place where people interacted. The were local and therefore the same families frequented them. The pharmacist knew his patients on a first name basis, their ailments, their likes, dislikes, tastes, and their circumstances. Credit was extended on a case by case basis. You would always meet someone you knew when you went there and there was so much more interaction and real interest in what your neighbor was doing.
Unlike the big box stores, malls, internet purchases. the corner drug was a social experience.
Armed with my band-aids, paregoric syrup, aspirin, baby powder and with my stomach full and happy I would skip home, all the while hoping there would be another pressing need in the near future.