The recent passing of my high school classmate Arlene Scola Ellenberger has initiated a virtual time travel trip for me back to the summer of 1948 when she, Bob Baldwin, and I worked as soda jerks at McMillen’s Drug Store. Dolores “Debbie” DeBlander, another BHS alumna, was a full-time employee and being two years older than the three of us was heavily involved in the management of the store.
I am sure we were very impressed with ourselves at that point. Come September we would achieve our goal of being Seniors, “top dogs”, at Bridgeville High School. Arlene had just had a major success playing the lead in our class play, “Love is Too Much Trouble”, an accomplishment she would repeat in our Senior Play. Bob was our Class President, a born leader in every respect.
In retrospect, 1948 was a pivotal year in many respects. That summer the Berlin Blockade and the Berlin Airlift confirmed the opinion of many returning GI’s that the conclusion of World War II had not “made the world safe for democracy” after all; the threat of international Communism and Soviet expansionism was serious.
President Truman brought back the draft, the first peacetime conscription since World War II. The Republic of South Korea was established in what had been the American Occupation zone. Our euphoria from the establishment of peace in 1945 was being replaced by the realization that we were already engaged in what became known as the Cold War.
The Pirates were respectable that year, ending up fourth in what was then an eight team National League. Ralph Kiner was in the second year of his string of seven consecutive seasons leading the league in home runs. Billy Meyer was the manager; Bing Crosby, a minority (25%) owner.
The Pirates were still quite popular at that time. I remember walking to work one Sunday afternoon from our home on Lafayette Street down Bank Street to Dewey and Station Street and hearing Rosy Roswell’s broadcast from a series of different radios, never missing a pitch.
It was also a pivotal year politically. We Republicans were thrilled to have the chance to take back the White House after sixteen years of Democratic domination. Harry Truman was considered an “accidental” president who had done very little to justify his re-election.
We had seven powerful candidates to unseat him – Tom Dewey, Robert Taft, Arthur Vandenberg, Harold Stassen, Earl Warren, Dwight Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur. Seventy years ago political conventions were fun to observe. Dewey eventually was nominated on the third ballot; his qualifications for the presidency were unparalleled.
Senator Taft was my candidate. His theme song was “Four Leaf Clover”; its refrain, “I’m looking over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before” implied that he had been a strong GOP supporter for years and that 1948 was his turn. Part of his appeal for me was the contrast between his humble, homely appearance and Dewey’s glamorous big city persona.
I assumed that my position behind the counter in a soda fountain was analogous to that of a bar tender in a high-class saloon, so I freely offered my opinion on any subject to every customer who occupied a stool in front of me. Surprisingly, most of them were eager to debate with me, despite my youth.
Mr. McMillen also employed a part-time pharmacist named Frank, who came in twice a week for six-hour evening shifts. I was impressed with how hard he worked. Every time I took a prescription back to him, he was bent over a typewriter entering information on three by five cards which he stored in a long metal case. When I mentioned this to Bob, he laughed and said, “Take a peak in the case when you get a chance”.
As it turns out, Frank was handicapping race horses. Each horse had its own card and he was entering the results of the nag’s most recent race. He claimed his system was successful enough that it supported him well enough that the only reason for him to work was to have access to Mr. McMillen’s typewriter.
Most of our soda fountain business was “fountain cokes” and simple sundaes, but occasionally a particularly flush customer would order a banana split. First step was to peel and split a banana in half and deposit both halves into a special dish, called a “boat”. Then we put a scoop of chocolate ice cream at one end, squirted chocolate sauce on it, and topped it off with crushed nuts. Next came a scoop of strawberry at the other end, with strawberry sauce and chopped strawberries. Finally, a scoop of vanilla in the middle, with a squirt of whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top. A work of art!
A lot of our business came from Bigi Bus Line customers. The drug store was an unofficial terminal for the bus line. Drivers would frequently come into the store and announce that they were about to leave for “town”, in case any of their customers were dawdling over their banana splits. Bus customers would come in to inquire if the 8:40 had left and when the next one was due.
I was a big fan of the bus line, and especially of the drivers. They all had regular schedules and knew their customers personally. If one of the regular customers wasn’t at his stop, the driver would peer up the cross street, making sure he wasn’t running to catch his bus.
Don Toney, John Rosa, and I made an effort to name all the Bigi drivers in 1948. We came up with three Villanis (Hudge, “Little Jim”, and Dick), three Vaglias (“Big Jim”, “Nesty”, and Sylvester), two Fiorentinis (Andy and Albert), Bruno Filippi, and Dino Bigi. Not bad for three Alzheimer’s-challenged octogenarians.
At some point Mr. McMillen went on vacation, leaving Debbie in charge. When he decided to extend his vacation, we began to have problems. Debbie handled ordering supplies nicely, but filling urgent prescriptions when Frank wasn’t available was a problem. Fortunately, Mr. McMillen’s fellow pharmacists in Bridgeville were friends rather than competitors, and we were able to run prescriptions up to Wilson’s and Bennett’s and get them filled there.
This was years before the establishment of the Bridgeville Public Library, so we did a brisk business with a modest lending library. I think they were all paper-backs with a modest rental fee. Our most popular number that summer was “Mr. Adam”, a semi-naughty tale of the only fertile male on earth following a massive nuclear mishap.
We earned three dollars for each eight-hour shift, which is the same salary I had the previous summer when I worked at the Bridgeville Bottling Works. John Rosa reported that he was making eighty-five cents an hour driving a truck for the Pruners; Don Toney topped us both working for $1.35 per hour at the brick yard.
If we believe the Consumer Price Index data, my pay in 1948 is equivalent to six dollars an hour today, a little bit below today’s $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage. Sounds about right.
In addition to pharmacist Frank, the drug store dabbled in gambling. I remember two different gimmicks. One was a punchboard, a thick piece of cardboard with many (one thousand?) holes, each containing a rolled-up strip of paper. The bettor paid a nickel or dime for the privilege of punching out a paper that might net him five or ten dollars (or nothing).
A variation on the punchboard was a wire wheel with a large number of tickets on it. For a nickel or dime you could pull off a ticket, open it up and quickly determine if you had won anything. Like the punchboard, these devices were illegal but no one was interested in enforcing laws against them. I think they paid off about seventy percent of the money spent on them.
Arlene, Bob, and I were making the transition from adolescence to adulthood at the same time our society was making the transition from post-World War II optimism to a long-term commitment of sacrifice to retain our way of life. We both would encounter many twists and turns in the road ahead and frequently wish we were back in the tranquil summer of 1948.
I found working in the drug store to be an interesting experience and was sorry that I couldn’t continue it when it was time to go back to school. By the next summer I realized how fortunate I had been to have this job. Things were bad in 1949; for us it was the summer of the Unemployment League. Several dozen out-of-work young men met behind the high school every afternoon, played softball, and complained about the economy.