The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Our local pharmacist just announced he’s pulling down his shingle and calling it a career. Mark was one of the last remaining hometown druggists who held out against the big box pharmacies over the past few decades. You were more likely to see a doctor making house calls than a pharmacist competing with CVS or RiteAid. I had a brother who ran five pharmacies back in Wisconsin, but they’re all gone now, absorbed by the mega-chains. So are the small chains he competed with, so are most of the bigger ones too. For us on the island it’s the end of an era that pretty much ended for everyone else a long time ago.

I went down the other day to bid Mark a fare thee well but he’d already boarded up the space. I’d only been in to have prescriptions filled twice, once for the flu and once for some cataract surgery drops so I felt like I needed to apologize for staying in good health while his business was struggling. Mark hadn’t put in coolers for milk and beer and pop, he hadn’t expanded into gifts and toys and stationary, he didn’t have aisles of cosmetics and health supplements. What he had was medical stuff and pharmaceuticals you needed a doctor’s prescription for. If he’d asked me for advice he didn’t want, I’d have suggested an ice cream counter. But I know he would have rejected that as a little too new-fangled. The man was an apothecary, all he wanted to be. Minister medications to the sick, fill prescriptions, give advice when he could. My brother always told me if I needed medical advice, talk to my pharmacist, cheaper than a doctor and for most maladies, just as good.

The world belongs to Big Money now. Amazon will probably take over most everything on earth in ten years or so. Grocery stores, book stores, hardware sales, clothing goods, yeah and drugs too. Drone delivery in a guaranteed two hours. Big is cheaper, competition is a thing of the past, the internet is the new Sears Roebuck catalog. Small town newspapers are dying, mom and pop groceries are absorbed, the real estate offices are consolidating, even the malls are dinosaurs on their last poop. Way of the world, nothing we can do about it, cry if you wanna….

Mark’s Pharmacy ought to be preserved by the local Historical Society along with Elger Bay Store, Huntington’s Grocery and Tyee MegaMart and a shrine to Mark ought to be erected out front. If there was ever a poster child for Pharmacist, he was the guy. Funny, considerate, concerned, professional — all those traits a great hometown druggist should have. Then add to that he and his wife Debbie’s involvement with the community, yeah, he’ll be missed, that’s for sure. As for me, sorry to see you go, Mark, but if you have any surplus of that new nasal spray ketamine that’s psycho-active you’re cleaning out of the backroom, call me, we’ll meet behind the dumpsters any day, any time, plenty of customers still left down here on the South End.

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