~a column about Jefferson by Colleen O’Brien
Avid for money of my own beyond the 25 cents a week I received as my very feeble teenage allowance, I went to work as a soda jerk when I was in eighth grade. This was in the spring of 1958, and it was a calculated piece of business. Working all summer would guarantee me enough money to buy my own Bobbie Brooks blouses at Downes women’s fashions so that when I waltzed into high school that fall, I’d be dressed like the heroines of my life, the senior girls. Fashionable days ahead spurred me on to put up with a job that except for the ice cream was, well, just a job.
Friends of mine worked at Downes, which was the coolest place to have a part-time job. The worst thing they had to do was iron things before they hung them on the racks. And then they got to talk to all their friends as we came in to try on Bobbie Brooks blouses. Where I worked, kids my age seldom came in; it was a place for adults or moms with little kids. Teenagers wouldn’t be caught dead in there it was so uncool.
At Tucker Pharmacy, on the south side next to Penny’s, I learned how to work. I earned 50 cents an hour dusting perfume bottles and over-the-counter remedies like Lydia Pinkham’s Pink Medicine. I spent hours in the basement opening boxes and shelving items in alphabetical order for easy access when the displays upstairs ran low on merchandise. I washed the plate glass window inside and out once a week and made displays to entice the public. I swept the front sidewalk daily and sometimes hosed it down.
Within a very short time, I knew in my secret heart that because I had been hired as the sole person to keep the store free from all stray specks of dust, I was indispensable. There was a certain pride in this, even as all I really wanted to do was work behind the fountain.
That’s where the action was. And where Cap ruled the roost. Cap and his brother had owned the drugstore at one time, and Cap’s part in the deal was running the fountain. After 50 or 60 years, he had it down. In his immaculately groomed crisp white short-sleeved shirt, he was precise, the most methodical person I’d yet met in my sheltered life. During a day, he smoked exactly the 20 cigarettes in a pack, using exactly the 20 matches in a book.
His moves never varied, even when we were swamped on Saturday nights. He was the invaluable person in my life (I later understood) who taught me that there’s always an efficient way, and if you use it, your life will be easier. As he showed me how to make malts and ice cream sodas, he was also teaching me to smile at rude folks because it completely disarmed them.
The working men and women from our side of the square came in at least twice a day for their regular treat – coffee and a donut, vanilla Coke, Alka Seltzer – whatever it was from our fountain that kept them sane. We were all friends. We had a great time, Cap and I and the regulars.
On rainy afternoons, I had to go to the basement to dust or unpack. Otherwise I dusted upstairs in between customers. Only during the mid-morning and mid-afternoon rush and on Saturday nights when we were mobbed with folks just out of the movie was I asked to work with Cap behind the counter.
The Saturday night the power went off during the after-movie rush is my favorite memory of Cap and my life as a soda jerk. The place went as dark as the far side of the moon. No light filtered in from outside because the whole downtown had flickered out.
Kids were crying and a man was cursing us and a woman was yelling at him to shut up. It was a bit of bedlam, but Cap just kept scooping ice cream into float glasses and pulling the root beer handle.
Within just a few minutes, the power came full on. In a kind of eerie response, two malt cans spun in slow motion off their malt machines, up and up, the cans still twirling, and then slowly down – upside down — their contents spewing malts all the while. The mirror, the counters and some of the customers dripped chocolate malt.
Cap calmly picked up a can, refilled it with ice cream, chocolate and a little milk and placed it back on the machine. I began wiping off customers.
Soon, people were happy again because they were getting their ice cream; they laughed as they told their version of flying malt cans. By 10:30, an hour and a half after normal closing time, they were all headed home, and I locked the door. Cap went around the counter and sat down on the end stool, something I’d never seen him do.
“Come sit here,” he said to me. “I need a little rest.” He lit up a cigarette, passed it to me and lit up his own.
It was too cool for words.
