(location) Marsh's Drug Store

[SKJAM!]

Since y'all like these.

 

MARSH'S DRUG STORE

 

History: Marsh's was originally Grimmon's Drug back when it was founded in 1883 by Elihu Grimmon. He ran the store until 1903, when he retired and sold it to Emmett Marsh, who'd been working there for several years. Over the years, Emmett slightly updated the store's look and inventory, and ingratiated himself to the neighborhood.

 

In the late 1920s, the store began to falter due to Emmett's poor business sense, and he was forced to make his son Edgar a full partner. Edgar has put Marsh's on a sound business footing and modernized the place. Thus, the drug store has thus far weathered the Depression quite well, though not everyone likes what "Young Doc" has done with the place.

 

Facilities: The front portion of Marsh's is clean and modern, with shiny chromium fixtures and glass cases. In addition to patent medicines and home remedies, the store carries a wide variety of items only vaguely related to pharmaceuticals, ranging from cosmetics to emergency knicknack gifts. There's a soda fountain up front that sells ice cream and cold sandwiches as well as fizzy water, and a magazine rack stuffed with pulps. (Comic books are still a couple of years off.)

 

Behind the pharmacists' counter, however, there is still a maze-like warren of wooden cupboards holding the chemicals and drugs that are their stock in trade. The Marshs are the only ones who can navigate with ease back there, though Edgar has plans for modernizing this section as well. There is a cramped office with two safes. One is for cash and important papers; the other is more secure and holds the narcotics and other restricted drugs.

 

There's a pay phone booth near the soda fountain; the door tends to stick.

 

Marsh's is open from 8 AM to 10 PM weekdays, and 11-5 on Sundays. The soda fountain serves 11 AM to 7 PM, and is closed on Sunday. By agreement, Edgar works the early shift, and Emmett the late one.

 

In addition to the services a twenty-first century drugstore might provide, the Marshes act as emergency first aid for the neighborhood, treating small cuts, scrapes and such. Emmett only charges for the materials used, but Edgar charges for labor as well. They can recommend good doctors for more serious cases. Emmett also provides another service for the neighborhood--he's become the local sex advice expert. His "VD talk" is a rite of passage for teenagers in the neighborhood.

 

 

Emmett Marsh: "Old Doc" Marsh is in his late sixties, a thin, kindly-looking man with white hair and horn-rimmed spectacles. His voice is a bit quavery, but he has a calming way of speaking.

 

Emmett is a fully qualified pharmacist who's been running the drug store for decades. He's well acquainted with the medical history of everyone in the neighborhood, though he doesn't gossip. He's friendly and well-liked. Unfortunately, he's not really a good businessman, and too kind-hearted for his own good. He has a very patient wife (who used to be a counter clerk at the store), one son (Edgar) and three grown daughters with families of their own.

 

 

Edgar Marsh: "Young Doc" Marsh is a stockier man in his early thirties, with a strong facial resemblance to his father. Though also a qualified pharmacist, Edgar is better at the business part of running the store. He tends to be brusque, and has little patience for "charity cases." Edgar's not nearly as popular with the customers, but without him the Depression would have finished the store off. He has a young wife who he married for her money, and a four-year-old son.

 

 

Ralph "Pep" Ellis: The primary soda fountain clerk. He's nineteen, and has been doing this since he dropped out of high school. Ralph has close-cropped blond hair, the better to fit under his paper hat, and sharp features sprinkled with freckles. Ralph's not particularly bright, but he's well able to handle the soda jerk duties, and shows up on time. (Most of the substitute clerks have had difficulty with the last.) Ralph uses a lot of slang, and has a big mouth. He's between girlfriends right now, and his parents are nagging him about getting a more "respectable" job.

 

Counter Clerks: Young, female, ranging from kind of pretty to kind of ugly. There's a fair amount of turnover in these positions, as Edgar has no compunctions about firing them for the slightest fault.

 

 

Johnny: The store's chore boy. He's twelve, but big and strong for his age. Johnny's father is dead, and his mother is sickly, so the small amount of money he pulls in for sweeping, cleaning and moving boxes after school and on weekends is desperately needed. Johnny is an ethnic or racial minority appropriate to the area the campaign is set in, and his life has been hard. Despite this, he keeps a positive outlook and believes in the American dream. Johnny wants to be either a pharmacist or masked crimefighter when he grows up. Johnny's a huge masked crimefighter fan, and has all the decoder rings and secret badges any kid could want. If one of the player characters is a masked crimefighter, he's Johnny's favorite.

 

 

Campaign Use: Marsh's Drug Store is for use in a very large town or a city; smaller towns would not have enough business to keep two pharmacists fed. The most likely use in an adventure is as a meeting place, or a first aid station. Some plot seeds...

 

"Protection Racket": Marsh's is typical of the sort of establishment gangsters would like to squeeze money from. As one or two PCs are present, a number of goons come in, disrupt business and damage one of the displays. Their leader makes barely veiled threats of worse to come unless the Marshes pay "insurance." Edgar is willing to fight, but it's clear that the crooks will only be put away for good is if the PCs convince the whole neighborhood to stand firm against them.

 

"The Predator": More for "spicy" games. A young woman, perhaps a year or two older than Pep, has been hanging around outside the store all day, looking in every so often. When approached, she rabbits, coming back in half an hour or so. Finally, she sees that Emmett is the pharmacist on duty, and comes in. She's clearly quite distraught, and Emmett takes her into the back office.

 

Although it's never directly stated, it's made clear that she's been sexually assaulted, and that she's not the first girl in the neighborhood that this has happened to recently. Emmett recognizes one of the player characters as the sort of person who'd do something about this (if this hasn't already been known to him) and directs the woman to that person for help. It's time to find the scum that did this, and get him off the streets.

 

"Special Sprinkles": Pep is surprised one day by a customer ordering "special sprinkles" on his banana split. When he asks the customer to clarify, the man becomes nervous and claims to have been joking. What's actually going on is that the latest substitute soda jerk has been using the position to distribute illegal drugs. But how to prove it and remove the perpetrator without damaging the store's reputation?

 

 

Thoughts, comments?

[JakSpade]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

I love your locations, SKJAM!

 

You should make up four or five of them and put out a PDF. You don't have to sell it if you don't want to, but they would provide some lovely Pulp locations for any game.

 

Jak

[Mentor]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

Great stuff. You have a real talent for this, SKJAM!.

[SKJAM!]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

Thanks, guys.

 

I just had a few ideas floating around, and may have some more, but I don't know when.

[Teflon Billy]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

I like it, but you need to mention the section that sells pipes, cigars, and tobacco. Every corner drug store that wasn't totally devoted to just medicine and medical supplies that I've remember seeing carried tobacco products.

 

Might be even more atmospheric if the Old Doc always had a nice merchaum pipe dangling from his lips, puffing away as he manuevered through the stacks of pill boxes, making the whole shop smell of a nice cavendish.

 

TB

[Basil]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

Lovely! Terrific, like all your locations. I'm with JakSpade; it'd be marvelous to have a bunch of these gathered together.

 

Two small ideas: Have 'em sell postcards.

 

Instead of a customer ordering "special sprinkles" on his banana split, have him ask for "juice" instead of one of the usual soda-fountain drinks. Turns out the substitute is selling alcohol underthte counter. It is prohibition, after all.

[SKJAM!]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

I like it, but you need to mention the section that sells pipes, cigars, and tobacco. Every corner drug store that wasn't totally devoted to just medicine and medical supplies that I remember seeing carried tobacco products.

TB

 

Good point. After all, it's not like smoking causes lung cancer or anything, per the ads of the period.

[SKJAM!]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

Lovely! Terrific, like all your locations. I'm with JakSpade; it'd be marvelous to have a bunch of these gathered together.

 

Two small ideas: Have 'em sell postcards.

 

Instead of a customer ordering "special sprinkles" on his banana split, have him ask for "juice" instead of one of the usual soda-fountain drinks. Turns out the substitute is selling alcohol underthte counter. It is prohibition, after all.

 

Postcards (and other stationery) are most assuredly available.

 

The default setting is 1935, by which point Prohibition is over, and the underworld is beginning to move more strongly into other intoxicants.

 

In the 1920s, Marsh's Drug Store is considerably less modern-looking, with wooden display racks and narrow aisles. It's also less well-ventilated, so you can really smell Old Doc's pipe smoke.

[Basil]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

Instead of a customer ordering "special sprinkles" on his banana split' date=' have him ask for "juice" instead of one of the usual soda-fountain drinks. Turns out the substitute is selling alcohol underthte counter. It is prohibition, after all. [/i']

The default setting is 1935, by which point Prohibition is over, and the underworld is beginning to move more strongly into other intoxicants.

 

In the 1920s, Marsh's Drug Store is considerably less modern-looking, with wooden display racks and narrow aisles. It's also less well-ventilated, so you can really smell Old Doc's pipe smoke.

OK, so set it a little earlier.

 

Frankly, I find the idea of narcotics for sale unlikely in such a setting. IMO, YMMV, LS/MFT, etc. That's why I went to booze.

 

Perhaps the sub. is selling booze to underaged kids?

[Brajah]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

Instead of narcotics or booze - how about a customer asking for an "Original Formula" Coke?

 

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_033.html

 

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/cocaine.asp

 

Or perhaps the soda jerk is a Chemistry major working his way through college and looking to create his own "secret recipe"?

[Mad_Ernie]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

I like the Marsh's Drug Store!

 

When I first was reading it, I thought it was the actually history of a pharmacy in the US. Sounds very authentic.

 

Coming from the profession, I noticed that there are some posts related to what would and would not be available in a pharmacy in the 1920s. An important point to remember is that prior to the Durham-Humphrey Act of 1951, which "defined the kinds of drugs that could be safely used without medical supervision and restricted their sale to prescription by a licensed practitioner", meaning that what we think of today as a prescription (a legal document between prescriber [MD] and dispenser [pharmacist]) was not legally required. Hence, in many instances, especially in the 1920s when 80% of the prescriptions were still being compounded, any person could walk into a pharmacy and request a remedy for ailment X, Y, or Z.

 

Similarly, narcotics were then available by prescription, but were not considered any different from a legal practitioner's point of view than other prescription drugs until 1970. That is when the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act " replaced previous laws and categorized drugs based on abuse and addiction potential compared to their therapeutic value". So now we have certain drugs which have different classifications (i.e., legend, scheduled narcotics such as C-II, C-III, etc.).

 

In the 1920s, the laws were very funky with regard to substances like heroin. The laws were such that it was illegal based on certain commerce/importation laws, but not by the same narcotics laws that are present today.

 

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure.

 

- Mad Ernie

[SKJAM!]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

I like the Marsh's Drug Store!

 

When I first was reading it, I thought it was the actually history of a pharmacy in the US. Sounds very authentic.

 

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure.

 

- Mad Ernie

 

Thanks! It was loosely based on my hometown's pharmacy, mixed with drug stores depicted in pulp stories I've read and movies of the period.

 

And you never know when that last little bit of authenticity will come in handy.

 

I remember reading one pulp story where one of the plot points was that the federal government had recently changed the law on prescriptions of narcotics, requiring them to be on special forms. Would have been early forties, I think. And of course, pulp law, like pulp science, can be dubious.

[Basil]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

{major snip}

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure.

- Mad Ernie

Nope.

 

In fact, if I were running a Pulp campaign, I'd be asking for more details right now.

 

Thanks for the info!

[Mad_Ernie]

Re: (location) Marsh's Drug Store

 

Another thought regarding Marsh's is some of the lingo used in such places during the time.

 

I noticed you picked up on the "doc" moniker. That was common back then, especially for the reason I mentioned about people simply walking into their local pharmacy, requesting and getting a compounded remedy for whatever ailed them.

 

The pharmacist of the 20th century is actually composite of the apothocary and the druggist. The apothocary belonged to the healing arts and compounded remedies based on everything science and pure anecdotal evidence. Everything had to be precise and reproducible. As I mentioned, by the 1920s, still about 80% of medicines being sold at a pharmacy were compounded on site. The druggist was a late 19th century new-comer who sold pre-made remedies (elixirs, powder papers, etc.) from a retail store, but had no special education or training. Hence, the health-professional and businessman merged during this time.

 

So, some nicknames and other titles for these people and places were: druggist, chemist (especially in the Northeast), doc, apothocary, and finally, pharmacist. Like medicine before the early 1900s, formalized and required education and training was largely a hodge-podge of different things depending on what state you lived in and what the state required, if anything.

 

More fuel for the fire.

 

-ME