Once Upon a Time on Main Street

The Way we Were

For decades the drugstore was where kids lined up at the soda fountain for ice cream and frappes.  Old timers stopped in for a cup of coffee and to share the news of the day. When The Inquirer and Mirror offices were located on Orange Street, up until the early 1960’s, the drugstore counter was the hub of where all island news was gathered. When the newspaper moved its Orange Street office to the Milestone Rotary a mile away, everyone said it’d go out of business being so far from town.

The iconic drugstore on Main Street was also where prescriptions were filled, where over the counter meds – aspirin and cough syrup – were bought, where cosmetics like Maybelline were sold, and where kids got mom fancy soaps and bath salts for Mother’s Day and aftershave or cigars for dad for Father’s Day.

It was open 364 days a year, from 8 o’clock in the morning until 6 at night, except for Thanksgiving when it closed at noon.

All that will come to an end next month when the Nantucket Pharmacy ends its prescription services and closes the soda fountain after the Christmas Stroll. It will soon be just another memory of the good old days when life was simpler and things seemed to make more sense. The pharmacy business is no longer profitable, and owner Allen Bell’s two-year efforts to sell his business have not been fruitful.

The cost of housing and staffing are the main culprits.

 The front of the drug store will stay open to try and sell off its inventory. But after the first of the year, Bell says he is done.

It is the last vestige of the way downtown Nantucket used to be. Its closure will mark the end of an era. Before the Internet, before the fast ferry, almost everything islanders needed was positioned in a store on either side of Main Street’s cobblestones.

The fact that we had to shop in person in the town where we lived, also strengthened our sense of community. One islander said his mother told him she could walk up one side of Main Street and down the other side and pick up everything she needed for the week.

The Hub was, at one time, a center of activity and another place to find out what was happening. Back when Nantucket had a funeral home, the director Ricky Lewis would post a typed index card on the door, alerting everyone to who had died and when the wake and funeral would be.

The place sold comic books, candy bars and an array of daily newspapers from around the country. In the back of the store were cubbies for people who wanted to reserve their paper and never have to worry that The New York Times would sell out before they got downtown.

The late, great Tim Russert would often be seen at The Hub on summer mornings, pulling two or three newspapers out of his box.

In addition to the Nantucket Pharmacy there was Congdon’s Pharmacy. The two identical businesses with identical soda fountains sat side by side, with plenty of business for both. It was the center of the universe for teenagers who hung out there after school, smoking cigarettes out front and maybe getting a Coke from Congdons  – the cool drugstore. Wannabe teens, getting out of middle school up at Academy Hill, were often warned by their parents not to be caught hanging around in front of the drugstore, as if that was the precursor to becoming a juvenile delinquent.

 Back then, in a town of 3,000, everybody knew everybody and looked out for each other. If you were a kid and acted up, you could be sure that someone would report your behavior to your parents by the time you got back home.

A barber shop, a beauty salon, and women’s clothing stores were on the south side of Main Street: Murray’s, Miltimores and Maud Dinsmore’s were fancy dress shops. Buttner’s, at the end of the block, was a department store where you could buy everything from underwear to a bolt of fabric and sewing notions.  There was also a hardware store on Main Street, a Five and Ten, two grocery stores – The A&P and First National – and a place to buy curtains.

After the First National moved out of town, Preston Manchester divided the building in two. On one side he created the legendary Bosuns Locker, a drinking establishment with a reputation, open from early in the morning until late at night. It attracted everyone from the island’s working class to literary types like Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam, to New Bedford fishermen, seeking shelter from the storm. A sheet of plywood, hammer and nails were kept handy behind the bar in the event a fight broke out and someone went through the window and it had to be boarded up. Not an uncommon occurrence.

The Charcoal Galley was on the other side of the building, a burger and fries joint that also served pizza. The Manchesters were our neighbors, and their youngest daughter, Yi, was my best friend. We were often recruited to peel potatoes and make cupcakes for The Galley, child labor laws be damned. The boys in the family ended up with janitorial duties.

Main Street was colorful. Full of life. Downtown Nantucket had everything we wanted. Everything we needed. And it’s where we all got together. It was the heartbeat of our community. And then things changed. It all started when Walter Beinecke acquired the Bosuns Locker building from the bank and set us on a trajectory that takes us to where we are today.