Friday, August 29, 1997
Old fashioned soda shop opens
By Ken Ellsworth / Abilene Reporter-News
THROCKMORTON -- You cannot fill prescriptions at Hardy Drug
Store.
You have to go to nearby Rose Drug and ask pharmacist Claude
"Pudge" Rose for that. Rose, by the way, has been Throckmorton
County's Outstanding Citizen of the Year twice in five years.
But you can get a little boost at Hardy Drug that will make
you feel better and do it nicely, thank you, without the aid of
a doctor scribbling something down on a pad.
For the old Hardy Drug Store, which stopped being a drug store
in the 1950s, has reopened as an old-fashioned soda fountain,
and you would have to be in pretty bad shape not to feel better
after downing one of the new establishment's brown cows.
Brown cow? Well, that is what my Grandmother called root beer
floats. She loved brown cows almost as much as that old soft drink,
Squirt, a beverage of which Grandma claimed curative powers.
"I've never heard of brown cows," Paige Mitchell,
the new owner of Hardy Drug Store, said Thursday morning. "But
we do serve root beer floats so maybe we'll start calling them
that."
I hope so. What, after all, could be a more appropriate in
the "Capital of Cow Country" than a brown cow?
Mitchell opened Hardy Drug Store about seven weeks ago, but
it took her seven months to scour the area's antique shops to
find all the fixtures that would go into her soda fountain.
"I have been everywhere that there is to be looking for
stuff," she said.
The fountain fixtures, for example, came from the old Rexall
Drug Store in Stephenville.
"It looks real old in here. Everything is an antique,"
Mitchell said, though I think she meant to exclude herself from
that classification since she is only 32.
"It really looks like you're going back in time when you
come in," she said. "I love antiques and old stuff."
Even the glasses that customers drink from are antique.
"They hang upside down over the soda fountain like it's
a saloon," Mitchell said.
The table settings are old, too.
"They're tin plates that are also antiques," Mitchell
said.
The Mitchells, who are the parents of four young children,
came to Throckmorton five years ago from Vernon. The family had
decided, Mitchell said, that Throckmorton would be a good place
for her husband, Robert Mitchell, 31, to open a saddle shop, "because
this is right in the middle of ranch country."
And Mitchell Saddle Shop has been quite successful, so successful,
in fact, that the investment in Hardy Drug was made possible,
Mitchell said.
"Honestly, it (the soda fountain) has always been a dream
of mine," Mitchell said.
Hardy Drug Store opened in 1925 and operated as a pharmacy
and soda fountain for more than 30 years. Most recently, the ceilings
were lowered and the building was used for offices.
When the Mitchells started poking around for a place for a
soda fountain, they poked through the ceiling tiles of the former
office building. There, high up, they found those much valued,
antique, tin molded tiles and a skylight.
Hardy Drug Store was perfect and the Mitchells would keep the
old name.
Mitchell and Brandi Keeter are the only two employees and keep
the business open Tuesdays through Saturdays. They are especially
busy serving up soup, sandwiches, and special items like quiche
during the 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. lunch hour. The soda fountain is
open 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and you can get sundaes, or a fresh-squeezed
cherry limeade, or other old-fashioned fountain goodies, including
brown cows.
This column covers the cities and communities of this part
of West Texas. To contact Ken Ellsworth, call (800) 588-6397 or
(915) 676-6777, or write to P.O. Box 30, Abilene, TX 79604.
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Copyright ©1997,
Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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