RALEIGH -- It's clear from the package of Father John's Cold Remedy, the handmade milkshakes and the toasted pimento cheese sandwiches that Person Street Pharmacy is no big-box, Muzak-playing drugstore.
If you need starker proof that the century-old pharmacy stands out in this age of chain superstores, consider the man limping up to Person Street's owner Mike James, complaining of chronically sore feet.
"Take your shoe off," says James, and the customer complies, shucking his loafer in the middle of a weekday lunch crowd. "Can you see any swelling? What's happening is you're getting a little extra fluid in there, and it's settling at night. You want to elevate your feet before you go to bed."
The red-brick pharmacy just north of downtown, which James and his wife, Barbara, have owned since 1976, just turned 100, a rarity not only among pharmacies, but among Raleigh businesses of any kind. It ranks as one of just 622 independent pharmacies left in North Carolina. The chain pharmacies have about twice as many. Roughly a fourth of the pharmacies in the state are now independent.
James persists in an era when some giant insurance companies mandate that employees get medicine by mail. At 65, an age that only 7 percent of North Carolina's active pharmacists have reached, James has no intention of retiring from the career he chose as a boy in Alabama, impressed by his local pharmacist's helpful air. He even stays open on snow days.
"If you come in here," he boasts, "we know what you want before you ask. We still offer in-store charge accounts. We still deliver. I still come down here at 12 o'clock at night to fill prescriptions."
His survival comes from having enough variety in his customer base that he gets customers well-off enough to pick their own health insurance, and those loyal enough to pay cash over the counter rather than submit to a mail-order plan. He counts on building business one customer at a time and keeping them for life, he explains. That way he doesn't have to worry as much about big companies shifting insurance plans and shutting him out.
"This is our treat," said longtime customer Evelyn Teeter, seated with a group of friends. "We're Meals on Wheels deliverers, and we always come here after our route. It's wonderful. I even like the greeting cards."
Hamlin's is even older
This same personal touch helps keep Hamlin Drug in business on Hargett Street in downtown Raleigh, where pharmacist John Johnson celebrated a century in 2007. He has survived the near-extinction of independent urban pharmacies by stocking hard-to-find home remedies, delivering them via a beat-up yellow Renault.
The appeal of the drugstore as gathering place still draws business to Person Street Pharmacy, to the point where octogenarian graduates of Raleigh's long-gone Hugh Morson High School still gather at the soda fountain on Fridays. In days when "Peace Girls" from the same-named college just down the street were limited in their off-campus travels, Person Street Pharmacy was approved.
In a memory book that James leaves out for his Raleigh customers, Pat Johnson recalls buying scarce chocolate there during World War II. Sheryl Bryant celebrated the joy of penny candy and cherry smash. More say thanks that the "over the hill gang" still has a place to congregate, a place that sells popcorn for a dime.
Since 1998, 95-year-old Ruby Bullock has toted homemade cakes to Person Street Pharmacy, many of them made with the very preserves that win her prizes at the N.C. State Fair.
"I don't have no recipes except up here," she said, tapping her noggin. "Pineapple. Butter pecan. Lemon. German chocolate. Devils food. Peach pound. Carrot and, once in awhile, red velvet."
But the heart of the store is the drug counter, marked by a large painted blue-and-white arrow that points down the side of the building along Pace Street.
James notes that customers walk in with prescriptions asking, "What is this for?" Doctors don't have time to explain, he says.
James does. One hundred years and counting.
