Coming soon (I hope) An Obe Wan Kenobi for all of us still with our feet on the floor.  Elliott has some words for you independent owners.

Elliott  #2  This is all he sent me about a year ago. 

Jim -please forward to those who wanted to hear more about 1930’s pharmacy.

Now I don’t want anyone to think my Dad was a slave driver. If there was a football game I would go. The work would be done before or after the game, didn’t matter. If it was a nice day and I wanted to play that was OK too because I could catch up on the work later. If one day was skipped altogether that was all right. Things were quite relaxed and due to the depression we weren’t that busy a lot of the time.
By the time I was 14 I was filling capsules. Let me explain. We had 5 or 6 physicians that we filled Rx’s for on a regular basis. Each one had a pet cold or flu capsule consisting of various amounts of aspirin, phenacetin, acetanilid, caffeine, codeine, salol. Each physician used some of these chemicals in his own formula and they never changed. Therefore to save time we would make up about 200 capsules in advance and keep them in a jar labeled with the physicians name. Usually they wrote for 24 to 36 capsules per Rx so we would count out that many from the bottle and not have to make up a new mix each time. The pharmacist would make the mixture and I would fill the capsules usually # 1 or # 2. The pharmacist would weigh one every 10 or 15 to be sure that I was filling with the proper pressure.

I graduated High School at 16 so when I matriculated at Rutgers in 1939 I had all of this background. I was actually filling Rx’s while in high school under the supervision of my Dad. At some point I developed a trick, that to my knowledge, no other pharmacist did. I would take a gallon bottle and balance it in my right hand and pour into a 6 oz bottle held in my left hand, never spilling a drop and even wiping the nose of the gallon against the bottle. When I would do this with an employee pharmacist watching they always kept a step back fearing that I would drop the gallon but it never happened and it didn’t matter if the gallon was full, half empty or almost empty. I did not cradle the bottle under my right arm I held it at shoulder height balanced on top of my right hand. My hands are quite small and I am only 5’8” and weigh 150. If you want to try this be my guest, it could be fun.

So how did we make money in those days selling a Rx for .95 for a 6 oz. bottle of cough medicine. We would buy 50 gallons of Stokes Exp. in October with a deal from P.D. that brought the price to .90 a gallon. The physicians pet cough medicine was 2 dram Ammonium Chloride and qs to 6 oz. with Stokes. We had a saturated solution of ammonium chloride in a pint bottle and would measure the amt. of ammonium chloride instead of weighing (much faster and already dissolved) then qs the bottle with Stokes, type a label and stick it. Time elapsed-5 minutes or less. Cost of Stokes .03, cost of Amm. Chlor. .01, cost of bottle .03, cost of Pharmacist labor .08. Total cost of Rx .15

Top wage for a Pharmacist in the depression was $50 for a 6 day 54 hour week. Don’t feel too sorry for the Pharmacist because you could live damn well on $ 50 in those days. Store rent was $150/month. Electricity very cheap, we had 3 - 150 watt lights in the front of the store and 2-100 watt lights in the Rx dept. Enough for now. Will continue

 Elliott #1

Let’s go back to what we did in the 30’s pharmacy. People in the country used to dose the kids every so often with Castor Oil. We used Baker’s Castor Oil because it was almost tasteless but a lot of kids (and adults) couldn’t stand the feel of it going down so we had a special “Castor Oil cocktail” that was my Dad’s invention. It went like this. We poured 1 oz. of Sherry Wine into a paper cup then added 1 oz. of Castor Oil and then floated about 15 drops of Tr. Cardamom Comp. on top. It was not to be shaken but swallowed in one smooth drink so you felt the wine on your tongue and the Cardamom after taste with no hint of the oil. We sold hundreds of these over the years and people were happy to pay .35 for it. That was good profit for the time as it only cost us about .05.

Funny story-one day a 9 yr. old boy walked in and said to my Dad that he needed a dose of Castor Oil. My Dad said OK and this time, because he was only 9, Dad put it in a Strawberry Soda and gave it to the boy. The family charged everything so Dad put it down. The boy drank the soda and continued to sit there. After about 10 minutes Dad asked him if there was something else that he wanted and he said Yes he wanted the Castor Oil. Dad told him it was in the soda and he replied that the Castor Oil was for his sister not for him. Communication is difficult for a 9 yr. old.

In the front of the store we had a tobacco counter with cigars, cigarettes, pipes, etc. Most of the farmers used chewing tobacco and we had Red Man, Copenhagen, Bugler, Beechnut as well as a couple of kinds of Plug tobacco. Due to the depression a lot of people rolled their own cigarettes, We had 3 kinds of cig. papers as well as two kinds of rolling machines one selling for $1 the other deluxe for $2.50. They did a really good job of rolling your own. Tobacco for rolling was mostly Prince Albert and Half and Half. The popular brands of Cigs. were Camels, Lucky Strike, Chesterfield and Old Gold. Lesser brands were Taretyon, Pall Mall, Murads, twenty grand, phillip morris plus others that I have forgotten. We sold a lot of pipes too and stocked at least 50 kinds of pipe tobacco. The pocket tins of pipe tobacco sold for .05 to .10 a couple of premium brands were .25

Cigarette price was 2 packs for .25 and 1.13 a carton on sale for 1.09

Another job that the kids had was wrapping boxes of Kotex and Modess because in those days nobody was supposed to know so we had the boxes prewrapped in front of the register counter. We didn’t use bags in those days because they were too expensive. We had 24”, 12” and 6” wrapping paper on large rolls under the sales counter. String came from overhead threaded though a couple of screw eyes. It took a while until you could wrap several items into a neat package so the customer could carry it home without the package coming apart.

Will continue another time