Norm's Pharmacy

I used to tell people my mother was a visionary and named me after the store. 

I seldom write about my days as a pharmacist. In some ways it was my penal servitude. In another sense, the ground I paced and discovered a way into myself. Ultimately I made peace with the profession.  

In high school, science and math came easily to me but in college I was soon to discover my aptitude and passions were elsewhere. One could say I majored in cowardice. Over the four years at Brooklyn College of Pharmacy (L.I.U.) I became even less interested in chemistry, physics and pharmacology, with all its structural formulas, laws of reactions and garden of botanical origins. Far too much memorization and not enough challenging ideas. History, literature and geopolitics were my meat but I couldn’t imagine how to put bread on the table with these subjects.    

I became a pharmacist because I didn’t know myself well enough to resist the certainty that a pharmacy license offered. My father’s footsteps called out to be followed. My mother said I would always have something to fall back on. I fell back and stayed there. Those fifty-three years counting and pouring are pretty much of a blur.

When I graduated in 1954 the pharmacy universe had virtually discarded everything I learned about crude drugs and the need for a mortar and pestle. Drugstores had become deodorized. The world I remembered of my father's drugstore would be consigned to my olfactory vault. 

Our shelves were filled with ready-mades. Big Pharma was Baby Pharma but already dominant with names like Squibb, Upjohn, Parke-Davis, Burroughs-Wellcome and Ciba, many of which have already been swallowed by bigger fish. The pharmacist did the work of a vending machine with the occasional detection of an incompatibility or overdose.

In 1980 I opened my own store in a medical building in Tarzana. By this time I could write poems in between labels. Still, confinement was always an issue. A pharmacist cannot leave that petty space without locking the doors. I was held-up at gun point about five times and broken into twice. The good news was that Pharmacy was about to be redefined again. We were no longer seen as dispensers but as consultants. Of course we had always been that shoulder to lean on and a well of information but now it was mandatory……..all without compensation, of course.

This aspect of the pharmacist’s role was my salvation. I took satisfaction listening to woes and weighing in when I had something useful to say. Often it was just receiving the patient’s ordeals and healings. They had my ear and my trust. For doctors I might have been a repository; a cauldron of arcane meds, labyrinth of insurance formularies and regulations governing controlled substances etc…

Into the Nineties another change was underway. Every wallet had an insurance card. We were paid a fee. Like it or not. All the power shifted to the fiscal intermediary. They set the terms. Mail-Carriers walked around with more medications than I filled in a day. By mid-decade many of my loyal customers were gone to mail order suppliers. One day the phone rang and I recognized the voice as Mrs. Benson. How did you know it was me, she asked. I replied, I only have two customers and the other one just hung up.

In 1997 I sold my pharmacy to a Russian family. Maybe they were distant relatives of my ancestors from Vilna but I doubt it. In fact they were from Odessa where courses of aggressive Capitalism must be taught. Any illusions I may have had about life in a communal state with a high value on social welfare were dispelled. Opportunism was in their DNA. The Russian emigres made an easy transition from communism to Medicaid.

At the height of a flu epidemic I might fill 85 prescriptions in a day. When they took over they filled 300 Rxs on a slow day and up to 500 on a busy Monday. I hung around for a few years and incrementally slipped away. I’m not sure anyone noticed. I forgot a fact a week so after a few months I knew nothing. The store still bears my name. I don’t know why. Maybe I’ve become a household word in Odessa.