My first recollections of Peoples Drug Store – Superior, Wisconsin
1943: I waited in my Dad’s maroon
1940 Oldsmobile fastback across the street from the Peoples Drug Store at the
corner of Belknap and Baxter.
Dad and Art Haugen, his partner in
the East End Drug Store, were in the process of closing a purchase deal with O.
B. Olson, owner and builder of the Peoples Drug.
I don’t know the exact time of
year, but there was no snow on the ground. Summers in Superior were so short that we jokingly hoped
summer would come on Sunday.
When I was a child my dad told me a
story about Peoples Drug Store in
the Roaring Twenties.
Dad was sixteen years old in 1924
while America
was riding the speculative economical rollercoaster fueled by post WWI
industrial expansion.
Prohibition had the country
swilling clandestine boot-leg booze in gangster controlled speak-easies.
Hyper-active 138 pound Dad was
self-motivated at an early age. He had three newspaper delivery routes at the
same time employing a helper. He mopped
floors and did janitor work before school mornings at Peoples Drug, and
repaired bicycles in his spare time.
Early one morning Dad was slipping
his key into the door at Peoples Drug Store to begin his janitor job when a big
long car screeched up to the curb, stopped, and three machine-gun wielding men
scrambled out.
Dad was pushed inside and
forcefully ordered to open the safe at gunpoint. He nervously told the menacing
gangsters his only duty was to mop the floors and carry out the trash. He
didn’t know the combination to the safe.
These Al Capone type gangsters were
in a big hurry and luckily only locked Dad in the basement coal room instead of
blasting him to bits.
In the pitch-blackness of the coal
room Dad’s thoughts quickly turned to the idea of escape. He felt his way
around in the blackness and found the coal shoot leading from the coal room to
the street.
This would be his escape route.
Dad then stealthily crept up the
coal shoot and carefully pried open its little door. As he cautiously peered
out he was terrified. He was looking down the barrel of a machinegun. Dad thought that his heart would explode. He
gingerly lowered the little door with a trembling hand.
The gangsters grabbed what they
could quickly pick up items of value, breaking into the narcotics drawer, and then sped away with a sack full of Parker fountain pens and lots of drugs.
Dad said that the incident didn’t
bother him for about a week and then suddenly flashbacks would startle him out
of a sound sleep with sweaty terrifying anxiety.
Dad went on to get his pharmacist
license and eventually became the owner of the Peoples Drug Store by the early
1940’s buying it from O. B. Olson, the original owner.
The gangsters were apprehended a
few weeks later and one of the things that helped convict them were all of
those expensive Parker fountain pens.
Peoples Drug Store had an ornate soda
fountain/lunch counter featuring hamburgers that were greases to kill. My
favorite soda fountain beverage at the lunch counter was the 5¢ Coca Cola that
came in several flavors all made from extracts known as phosphates, the charged
water was added. Cherry flavor with a dash of chocolate was sensational.
I started working at Peoples Drug
Store when I was fourteen, cleaning shelves, washing bottles, washing windows,
shoveling/sweeping the side walk and burning garbage.
At sixteen years old I started
waiting on customers, stocking shelves and doing the inventory. When I got my
drivers license I did deliveries and got to know a lot of people in the five
years I worked there.
The Drug store had three full time
pharmacists, Bob Cleary, Bud Dice and my dad. At the time there were fourteen
Drug Stores in Superior
and none were chain operated.
The grand opening of Peoples Drug
Store was on May 17, 1924. Ralph Carter was the general contractor of the building and all
the brick was supplied by Northern Supply & Fuel Company and the lumber by Campbell
Lumber Company. Peoples had
an "up-to-the-minute" soda fountain and
on opening day gave away souvenirs to everyone visiting the store - candy for
the ladies, a puzzle toy for the children and cigars for the men. The drug
store is still in business in the same building at 1124 Belknap Street.[i]
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