The central aisle of a drugstore might seem like a strange place to learn how to strut like a stripper with certain exaggerated shoulder and hip moves. But learn — or at least try — we did on a warm, rainy July evening in 1960 at Murray’s Pharmacy on Main Street in Wellfleet.
That night, the owner, Bob Murray, apparently tired out by the demands of folks forgetting their prescription bottles but wanting their drugs anyway, put an album on the store’s stereo. It was the cast album from the Broadway musical Gypsy, and Mr. Murray, in a moment of silliness, strutted down the aisle to the suggestive drumbeat of “Let Me Entertain You,” then invited us to take our turns. I was working with Nancy Sheehan that night and, giggling, we both gave it a try.
Although my family always stayed in a cottage in Truro, that summer I was 16 and moved into a shared four-bed rented room in the old sea captain’s house at 25 Bank St., then owned by the Ramsdell family and conveniently located right next door to the pharmacy.
At Mr. Murray’s shop, we — the staff were all young women, dressed in white uniforms — sold beach toys, greeting cards, cosmetics, and every sundry that anyone on vacation could need. The soda fountain took up half the store, which occupied about a third of the circa 1935 building that today is the Wellfleet Marketplace and before that was Lema’s.
Working the soda fountain required the mastery of lots of equipment as well as of recipes for such things as banana splits. The fountain cash register was a cranky antique, but we made it work. Mr. Murray made his own coffee syrup for coffee sodas. He would brew a pot of coffee all day, then, late in the day, when it was a thick sludge and smelling slightly burnt, he added sugar and water until it was the consistency that would splurt out of the coffee syrup dispenser just the way he wanted it to.
Edmund Wilson, here from New York for the summer, frequently stopped in for his preferred coffee soda with no ice cream, just soda and the special house coffee syrup. “No ice cream?” I asked, startled by his request to leave out the best part. The reputedly ferocious literary critic patiently explained that he simply liked it that way.
It seemed uneventful to me that Xavier Gonzalez and Edwin Dickenson, both artists, would come in for coffee or ice cream and engage Mr. Murray in conversation. But I was more than a little starstruck when Julie Harris — already then recognized as a brilliant actress — walked in looking for a toothbrush. She offered that she had unexpectedly arrived in Wellfleet Harbor on a sailboat and had not been prepared to stay overnight. She was wearing a blue and green beach dress and a very stylish large yellow sun hat that, with her long hair, disguised her face and protected her pale complexion.
On a rainy, steamy night near closing time, I kept hearing a popping sound as I swept the shop floor. I looked down and realized that I was stepping on tiny toads, probably Fowler’s or eastern spadefoot toads, escaping the flooded wetland behind the store. Their journeys had taken them up a cement ramp along the side of the pharmacy, around to the Main Street sidewalk, and then uphill right in the front door of the store, which stood open to welcome customers. I swept them unceremoniously out the front door.
One morning, walking to work, I heard a long wolf whistle. Two guys drove by in a sports car with the top down. Later, the same insolent two came into the store and, smirking, asked me for condoms. Mr. Murray had introduced his young female staff to the condom drawer behind the cash register with the firm instructions that he was to be called when they were requested, but at that very moment he was on the phone. He evidently overheard the request, though, as he quickly ended his call, came down the three steps from the drug dispensing area, and sternly took over the transaction. One local man was a regular. Every Friday night, like clockwork, he came in with a sixpack from the nearby liquor store under his arm and asked for Mr. Murray. And every Friday night, he bought a package of condoms and headed home to his wife. At least that was what Mr. Murray said.
Lipsticks, perfumes, and suntan lotion were in the back of the store where there was a pretty little fountain with two levels of shallow water. Sometimes moms with toddlers would lose track of their little ones as they browsed these products. It was not uncommon for small boys to be inspired by the sound of the waterfall and drop their drawers to pee right into the fountain. After numerous calls for “cleanup in cosmetics,” the fountain disappeared.
By my second summer at Murray’s Pharmacy, 1961, I had graduated from North Attleboro High School and would be on my way to the University of Maine in the fall. Now I was well informed as to Mr. Murray’s various protocols and was adept at handling the summer people, who were often rushed and rude if we took too much of their time helping other customers.
Mr. Murray presented me with a gift at the end of my last shift that summer. It was a coping saw, inscribed with the words, “Every University Woman Needs to Know How to Cope.” Indeed, I had learned a lot. I got an inkling about young men who delighted in flustering a young woman; I learned that the famous people who made their lives outside of Wellfleet could be informal and even kind; I learned about the complicated lives of toads. I kept that coping saw for a long time.
