Buice Drugs, Stift Station

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 An excellent old neon sign in the Stift Station neighborhood near downtown Little Rock. The owner, George Wimberly, recently died at age 92 or so. The interior is cleared out and I wonder what will happen to this institution. By the way, it's pronounced like "vice."

More photos from Stift Station to follow. A bit of background after the jump.

Liquortown

Most folks around here know Augusta, Arkansas for one thing and one thing only: liquor. It's the closest town to the west that's not in a dry county, and the county-border liquor store does a lot of business with the residents of White County (including us, I'm afraid).

But a slight detour will lead you off of Highway 64 and into what the signs refer to as a "business district" (this is driving lingo for "downtown," seeing as all of the business in Augusta takes place far from here).



The road to downtown Augusta is watched over by the above courthouse, a very solid-looking building that was built partly out of an extremely old household. Most of Augusta was destroyed during the Civil War, but some of the larger homes were kept standing so the Union officers could have places to stay. I would like to think that the house at the top of the post (next door to the courthouse) was one of these homes.



There are more dogs than people in downtown Augusta. On our entire walking trip around the business district, we saw not a single person outside of a car, and even those were rare. A few people could be seen in their yards several blocks away from Main Street, but other than those souls, mostly we just heard the howling of dogs.



Augusta had its heyday in the age of steam, when most of the commerce going up and down the White River were carried by boat. Augusta foolishly waved on the railroad when they came through, then later built their own line when they realized their town was dying. That desperate attempt petered out by 1958.



In 1930, a bridge was built across the White River that represented the last portion of the river still requir ferries to cross. Later on, we spent $17 million to blow up the historic bridge and replace it with your standard 4-lane highway. I guess I could harp on that for a while, but we've all heard Joni Mitchell sing about it already.




To be honest, Augusta has one of the bleakest town centers of any I've ever visited. Even husks like Kensett and Wynne are more populated than this place. Oh, and it has a moldering old movie theater which I have previously blogged about. These days, besides serving alcohol to naughty Harding students, I suppose Augusta mostly struggles with its 50/50 black/white population.

One little detail that I really enjoyed about Augusta's downtown were these mosaic titles on a few of the buildings:



I know, one of them is actually stained glass. Direct all complaints to my secretary. I especially love the bank tiles that feature a period. As if to say, "THIS IS A BANK. DO NOT ARGUE."

Needless to say, the identities of these buildings as a bank and drug store changed long ago.

-Jonesy

Phosphates

Here's another thing which has basically disappeared in this country: privately owned drugstores. These little shops used to be social centers of their own right, even containing a little eat-or-drink-in spot: the soda bar. Soda bars were eventually replaced by full-on lunch counters, which in turn were replaced by your favorite greasy fast-food joint. Basically folks didn't want to have to park their cars in the busy city districts, opting for the easier, built-in parking allotted to the newer, more surburban restaurants.

Drug stores changed as well, becoming like miniature Wal-Marts in their own right. You can still buy soda and snacks, but there's no more community center.



The above image is from a drugstore in Damariscotta, Maine, the small town in which my brother was born. Since Maine has towns that endeavor aggressively to keep their small businesses, little drugstores like this still survive. This one still has its original soda bar, and still sells soda and ice cream there. When I was growing up in Boothbay Harbor, we had three small drugstores: Brooks, Downeast Pharmacy and one more that's slipped my mind. Downeast Pharmacy had its bar in the back, but I can't remember in my old age how functional it was.

But Downeast had a lot of character. I would go there and sit in the back reading Mad Magazine, other times walking down from my house to rent a tape to watch. Sometime after I moved from Maine, the inhabitants of Boothbay (quite surprisingly) allowed a Rite-Aid to take up residence just out of town. Now Brooks is gone and Downeast Pharmacy is an antique store.



I've already mentioned Robertson's Drugstore in Searcy, now home to Quattlebaum's Music. But the rival drugstore Stott's, immediately to the right of Robertson's and visible in the above picture (then Bramlett's Cafe), is still in business. They are still a drugstore, but sell a lot of other bizarre things as well, as most existing private drugstores do. I've been in there and looked for remains of a soda counter, but found nothing. Most traces of antiquities are gone from Stott's, besides the various old trinkets lining the tops of the shelves and the 90 cent glass bottles of Coke available from an old vending machine at the front of the store.

But my favorite old drugstore is in Mountain View.



The apothecary is located in Mountain View's beautiful and functional downtown. I don't know much about its history, but it has clearly been there for a long, long time. The whole place is one of the best recreations of a bygone atmosphere I've ever felt. Just look at the beautiful tin ceiling! The apothecary serves ice cream, light lunch material and sodas, and of course they still have their classic soda bar:



At the bar, they actually mix up the sodas themselves, serving them as "phosphates." Even though it is arguably just the same as any soda you might get anywhere else, the fact that they mix them themselves, just like in the past, is what keeps me coming back.

That, and the apothecary isn't just a set piece: the place is a fully functional drugstore as well as nostalgia center. There are lots of reasons to go to Mountain View, but this is one of my favorites.

-Jonesy