The Drug Store
The Bronx 1938
It never was “The Drug Store”; it was “Adoff’s”. If someone in the family was down with a cough from a chest cold, Ma would say,
“So you’ll go to Adoff and you’ll get me ah mustehd plesster.”
She placed the mustard powder in a bowl then added hot water to make a paste. This horror was transferred to a wide, gauze cotton sac and then applied to my chest. Its acidic fumes filtered through the gauze, sped directly up my nose and drained my tear ducts. I could inhale through my nose again but did it help? Who knows?
The drug store was on street level, below an apartment building on the corner of Seabury Pl. and East 172 St. in the Bronx. Two large, curved glass urns filled with a light blue liquid sat at each end of Adoff’s window on Seabury Place. These stately vessels framed the boundaries of a monthly over-the-counter drug promotion. Dummy, non-prescription drugs were scattered between the urns interspersed with ads extolling the benefits of Ex-Lax or heartburn medications such as, Feen-A-Mint, Bisodol or Sal-Hepatica. An Evening in Paris perfume was the permanent feature in the window on East 172 Street. A large pale blue photograph, the length of the window displayed a slightly out of focus, beautiful, dreamy woman in a reclining position waiting for her lover to home in on the tantalizing scent of the perfume.
The drug store was an aid station, a place where prescriptions were filled, a source of our medicine cabinet supplies and an adjunct to the phone booths at the nearby candy store. If a few rubs with a dirty finger didn’t dislodge a cinder in the eye, a shout of “Let’s go to Adoff!” was heard. The victim, surrounded by the boys marched off to the drug store.
“Adoff, I can’t see. There’s something in my eye.”
Adoff would step out from behind his dimly lit counter and usher the victim to the bright light flooding the doorway.
“Keep your head up and don’t move.”
I watched in awe as Adoff raised his arms and pushed back his sleeves.
If the cinder was in the upper lid, without washing his hands, he placed one hand on the forehead and his thumb from the other hand on the eyelashes and he asked his patient to blink. This lifted the lid. Then like a maestro with a baton, he swooped a Q-tip over the inverted lid to dislodge the cinder. When this medical miracle was completed, I was convinced that Adoff should have been a surgeon. His gray-tinted, rimless octagonal lenses, his meticulously pressed gray cotton jacket and serious countenance assured me we were dealing with a professional. As I was about to leave the drug store, Tsoots stepped in.
“Adoff, I’m fahrshtupped (contipated). You have maybe a fihzik for me?”
He suggested Ex-Lax with a warning that a doctor should be seen if there was abdominal pain or no relief in three days.
“Three more days? For two weeks I have shtayner (rocks) in my kishkes (intestines)!”
“Stop taking the Ex-Lax and go see Doctor Kulock ,” he counseled.
Our medicine cabinet contained aspirin, iodine, peroxide, mercurochrome, Milk of Magnesia, alcohol, some gauze and a roll of tape. Should there be a logjam, our laxatives were in the form of fruits and vegetables supplemented by Milk of Magnesia.
“Rose, I had a corn muffin in the Automat this afternoon and now I have heartboining in mine chest,” moaned Pa.
“I just bought Ex-Lax.”
“No, no, that’s for contispation and your Feen-A-Mint helps me like a toiten bahnkess (like a dead man is helped by cupping).
Get me please a tablespoon and the bottle of Milk of Magnesia.”
I stood by absorbing the medical knowledge whenever it was dispensed in our apartment.
In 1940, an A&P supermarket was built on Boston Rd., adjacent to the left side of my apartment building. Housewives purchasing their groceries could get their first aid supplies where they were cheaper than at Adoff’s. Many tenants, like my mother remained loyal to their professional, Adoff.
At Adoff’s we received a rare phone call for my parents. It was the phone number we gave to our relatives in Montreal. Less hectic than the candy store that also had phone booths, Adoff could be relied on to get a messenger to us.
I was sitting in a phone booth at Adoffs waiting for him to fill a prescription when Flat Anne (flat chested) appeared through the window of its folding door. Her slender shape nearly dissolved into the dim light. She nervously waited until Farrel, who claimed he knew every policeman on the beat left, then, stealthily, she made her way to Adoff who was in the rear filling my prescription. She whispered something in his ear. He went to a shelf behind the counter and quickly slipped a box into a large paper bag. Menstruation was a topic not to be mentioned in public places. Condoms were squirreled into a secret drawer near the register. To the mumble of “Sheiks”, Adoff opened the drawer, wrapped his hand around a small, tin container then quickly transferred the package on to his edgy customer. At this time a man’s legitimate or illegitimate sexual activity was not a topic for public discussion.
Brodsky the butcher, Pinsky the grocer, Litroff the baker, Jack the candy store owner, Jake the Pickleman and Adoff knew everyone in the neighborhood. They knew the joys, aspirations and disappointments of their customers. But as progress visited the neighborhood in the form of the supermarket, all the services of these mini enterprises were incorporated into the A&P megastore. But who were the clerks? Who was the manager? The manager could have asked, “Who are the patrons?” Neither had a relationship with one another. When I waited to pay for the rolls at his bakery, it was nice to be quizzed by Litroff,
“No challah? Your mother was baking this week?”
There was a sincere “hello” when you opened the door and stepped into Adoff’s. Only Jake the Pickleman’s insults let you know he was aware that you existed also existed. The A&P supermarket contributed to their demise. These small businessmen didn’t answer to a Board of Directors. Their Board of Directors were their customers. These small businessmen made our cement streets and asphalt gutters a lively neighborhood.
Unfortunately neighborhoods change, but fortunately many of the first generation offspring became professionals and moved to the suburbs. Unfortunately, their children could not experience the rich happenings their mothers and fathers had encountered.
Daniel Wolfe