Orange Sherbet

It must have been at the corner of East Gadsden Street and North 13th Avenue, Pensacola, to my recollection across from where East Hill Baptist Church was, a corner drugstore, curb service. Maybe next door to the Piggly Wiggly. Piggly Wiggly was the first self-service grocery store where you go in and get what you want instead of handing your list to the mom and pop grocer to pick off the shelves and gather on the counter for you. The corner drugstore was a drive-up or curb store: you drove up to the front and honked your car horn. Someone came out, took your order, went back inside, and in a couple minutes brought your order out to the car. Medicine, cokes, malted milkshake, ice cream cones, whatever. The drugstore delivered too, a boy dressed in white on a bicycle, riding very fast especially if he was delivering ice cream.

My grandparents' house was a couple blocks away on East Strong Street and the great delight on a hot summer afternoon (no air conditioning in those days, just electric fans and hand-held cardboard fans advertising a funeral home) was when the doorbell rang (it was an old fashioned twist bell on the front door, we had one on the rectory door in Apalachicola too), someone went to the door and paid the boy for the quart of orange sherbet. It had been hand-scooped into a cylindrical quart container made of cardboard, and was plenty for everyone to have a small bowl. It was my first orange sherbet, the best, and none matches it to this day.

We had a curb service drugstore on Harrison Avenue too, west side of the street. It was before Walgreens was built at the corner of Harrison and 5th Street. It was located after Walgreens but before First Baptist at Harrison and 6th Street. So it would have been Harrison between 5th and 6th Streets. A drive-up curb service drugstore. This would have been in the late 1930s.

My memory. My grandmother was here from Pensacola and we drove up on the curb (sidewalk) at the drugstore, she honked the horn, and someone came out and took our ice cream order. Why is that such a strong memory? We were in my grandmother's silver DeSoto Airflow. It was a 1935 or 1936 four door sedan with what is now called "suicide doors." Again no air conditioning. The car was cooled by opening the windows, and opening the two cowl vents, and cranking the windshield open. It was pretty fancy.

That was better than seventy years ago. Not many left who remember the DeSoto Airflow. Not to mention the drive up curb service drugstore on Harrison Avenue.

Shalom.

Right shoe first.

TW+