Ron the Yarn Spinner

 

Show Globes

 

“This will take about thirty minutes.”  “That’s Okay Mister Stoleman, I will wait.”

We lived five blocks from Stoleman’s pharmacy. I really did not want to make another trip to collect the prescription. The chairs in the waiting area were comfortable and the store was air conditioned, although it did smell “drugstory.” It was not an unpleasant smell, though, just one that seemed unique – a combination of alcohol and beauty products. I sat down and waited, passing the time by looking through the pile of Life and Look magazines on the table before me, and occasionally glancing at the globes.

The pharmacists’ counter was at the back of the store, typical even in today’s Walgreens or CSV, providing an opportunity for marketing displays to assail customers to purchase patent medicines and other health care items before getting their “script” filled. That is where Stoleman spent most of his day, guarded by the globes. To me they looked to be about thirty inches high and fifteen inches across, there were two, one red and one blue. I wondered why they were there, but I didn’t bother to ask. I was twelve years old; maybe they are symbolic, I thought. Years later, I learned they were.

For more than a half-century show globes were the symbol for a pharmacy much like the barber pole was at Adam’s Shop two blocks away. The large standing globes set high on the counter in metal framework were displayed for all to see. Each held several gallons of liquid.

The globe’s contents were allegedly known only to the pharmacist who would prepare secret mixtures. He would add water and mix chemicals together to give the globes great beauty according to his own recipe. Every pharmacist had his own special formula to color the water inside the show globe and the druggist took immense pride in creating and showing off his ability to mix the perfect color – and for good reason: to display his chemical prowess.

When show globes were first used by pharmacists, drugs were often extracted from plants that were ground with a mortar and pestle. Pharmacists would take the crude drug, like digitalis, and add cold, warm, or hot water to the plants and let them steep. Often, they would use alcohol for the extraction process. Once the extraction was complete, the druggist would place the tincture or extract into bottles and later use it as a mixer.
The ability to accurately extract and mix was the sign of a competent druggist. Therefore, coloring the water of a show globe would display this ability. Prior to the early 1900’s most states did not even require pharmacists to be licensed to practice medicine. Even as late as the 1930s, newspaper articles warned of fake drugstores. The globe was a way an educated and skilled druggist could be recognized by his community. The two small spotlights Stoleman placed behind each Sphinx-like guardian of his profession added another dimension.

The red globe was on the left, but the blue one was on the right side closest to the soda fountain. Each projected a warm wave of color reflecting off the soda fountain’s mirrored wall but the blue one worked best. 

Standing to replace the magazines onto the table, I asked “Do you ever miss the kids at the soda fountain, Mister Stoleman? “Yes, I do,” came the reply. (Stoleman closed the ice cream soda fountain some years earlier. Times changed and the teens did not come any more) “They were fun,” he said, and I followed his gaze taking in the fountain’s mirrored walls, impressive stainless-steel fixtures, even the Bromo Seltzer dispenser, while he paused with a look of melancholy toward the now abandoned stools. I wondered if he occasionally saw phantasmal images of teens sitting at his soda fountain counter laughing and enjoying an egg phosphate or a real cherry-coke while the forty-five flipped in the juke box to “Jail House Rock.”  Maybe be did.

   “God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.”  J, M. Barrie

“Your medicine is ready.”

 

 

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