Thiel Drug

Thiel Drug

There once was a magical kingdom at Fourteenth and Main in my hometown, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. There, at the corner, alongside Blamey's Meat Market and Dille's Grocery was Thiel Drug. A small red neon sign above the door spelled out "T-h-i-e-l". The entrance faced the angle of the street corner and the door was big and heavy. To a nine-year old who had never been much farther from home than Milwaukee, the external architecture of that building seemed exotic. Its design was something akin to a low-budget rathskeller. Thiel's front display window offered the same faded and curiously unkempt contents for all the years that I lived on Howard Avenue. Once inside, the reason for that was all too clear. Merchandise obscured the internal access to it, encasing the contents as in a museum.

Just seven doors from our home, a trip to Thiel's was a frequent treat for me. It was a wonderland of sights and mingled smells and a visit was more safari than mission. Once inside, there were only two choices of direction. The path to the right took one to mountains of merchandise. To the left, it passed both the penny candy case and the cigarette and cigar display. There it took a right turn to the soda fountain stools and beyond. The clerk could make malteds, sodas with chocolate or cherry syrup, floats, sundaes, banana splits, and lemon and cherry cokes. In the rear of the store, to the left, there were two booths. By the time I became a customer, only one functioning sit down remained. The encroaching volume of stock had eclipsed the second. The terrazzo floor too, was only visible in the path areas. Along the narrow walkways were displays of items and stacks of boxes waiting to be unpacked into any gap in the wall of commodities. A modern-day fire marshal would swoon were he to step into that tangle of goods and wares. To the right rear of the store, a nearly solid wall concealed the pharmacist and his world.

Thiel Drug was a commercial marvel. Pretty nearly everything you would find in a modern Walgreen Drugstore was in Thiel's. . . somewhere. The whole experience at the latter, however, was compressed into twelve foot by twenty. There were Sen Sen Breath Refreshments, cigarette papers, tinned tobacco, magazines, and the Fond du Lac Commonwealth Reporter. Products guaranteed to beautify the user included lotions and potions, Aqua Velva, blades, red and pink lipstick, toilet water, Burma Shave, six colors of nail polish and the remover to erase it, Pepsodent and Hopalong Cassidy toothpaste, and tooth powder. This was Mecca for the infirm and the lame. There were Aspirin, Pepto Bismol, alcohol, eyecups in clear and blue as well as boric acid, Dr. Scholl's foot powder, talcum, mustard plasters, crutches, cotton by the roll, liniment, udder salve, oil of clove, whole sheets of moleskin, and Vicks Vapo Rub.

Display cards of hard rubber combs, brushes made of boar bristles, barrettes, bobby pins, hairpins, hairnets in gray, black, and brown, hair ribbons, and Brylcreem Hair Dressing, lined the counter space. For entertainment, a kid could buy firecrackers, jacks, metal cricket clickers, finger traps, paddleballs, jack knives, and marbles. Mr. Thiel stocked playing cards, table games, stationery, bottles of ink in blue and black, and fountain pens with genuine gold nibs. A card rack offered greetings for six occasions. There were glasses: both tinted and reading, visors and magnifying lenses. He stocked cough lozenges, hot and cold water bottles, enema equipment, as well as Auralgon for earaches, steamers, and garden seed year 'round. All this and much more found arrangement in no particular order and one would need to locate an item from experience rather than sectional category.

This place was Oz incarnate and Bill Thiel was the wizard. The pharmacy was situated in an enclosure at the right rear corner of the store. The space it occupied could not have been much larger than a good-sized closet although it was difficult to make an exact determination. The only interface between pharmacy and retail was an eighteen-inch square hole in the wall. When tending to his remedy business, Bill's face pretty well filled the opening and made any other assessment of his chamber difficult. I could only get the feeling that his work area had a disorder similar to the public side of the wall.

I did occasionally see all of him. Mr. Thiel was a tall man and spare. If he had a genius, it was something in the nature of finding ways to squeeze other displays into what appeared to be no space at all. Bill was not given to chatty exchanges with nine-year olds, so I don't remember much more of him than that.

My visits to Thiel Drug were either in the nature of an errand for Mom or Grandma, or the need to spend the nickel Grandpa gave me for some completed chore. That could have been picking up twigs from the lawn, sweeping the sidewalk, "helping" him at his workbench, or perhaps, hanging the hankies and washcloths on the special clothesline strung up low just for me.

The display of penny candy was expansive and if I planned carefully, five cents worth could fill a small brown paper bag at Thiel's. Few items cost more; but most were priced at one cent and some were two or five for a penny. There were jawbreakers, wax lips and fangs, Teaberry and Black Jack Gum; rolled paper lined with candy buttons, pink and green bubble gum cigars, peanut butter logs, and banana BB Bats. Bill furnished lemon heads, Big League gum, Stark wafers, Slo Poke suckers, root beer barrels, Beeman's and Clove gum, candy cigarettes with pink tips, taffy, and candy ice cream cones. There were wax soda bottles filled with red sugar water, red hots, licorice whips, rock candy on a string, Jujubes, and more.

A nickel worth of decisions was a daunting task and took time. The endless distractions around me delayed my final choices. It took me thirty minutes just to wander around and look at everything. The clerk in Thiel's was ever watchful when someone was in the store. It was her job to guard against theft and that obligation precluded her from doing much, other than dusting. The soda fountain counter top was the only exposed horizontal surface in the store, so "dusting" meant standing behind it and mindlessly wiping her rag in lazy circles over the same territory while she focused on customers, including me.

I did steal a package of chewing gum once. That was several years earlier and I was with my best friend, Patty, from Linden Street. We "went shopping" at Crouch's Grocery and I helped myself to a pack. Devoid of cunning, I was no more than home with it when my parents made it clear that I had done the wrong thing. There was no spanking; it was worse. I was marched right back to Crouch's, gum in hand where I returned the gum, paid for it, and apologized to Harlan Crouch himself. Although a man of average height, I clearly remember how very tall he seemed on that occasion. I was so ashamed and embarrassed for my parents and myself that I never again felt the temptation to remove goods without proper exchange of cash.

I don't remember ever being spanked although I guess it must have occurred on some occasion early in my life. Once, my friend Peter, and I burned Grandpa's garage to the ground. I wasn't spanked then, either. Standing at the kitchen window watching the flames devour Grandpa's "office" was punishment horrible enough. No, Mr. Thiel's clerk was wasting her time watching me: Theft never entered my mind.

Thiel Drug is no longer in business. A modern-day store displaying and selling stained glass now occupies the once magical kingdom. Modern principles of merchandising overtook such outmoded operations long ago and replaced them with wide isles, bright lights, ten varieties of each product type, and photo development. The soda fountain went the way of the dinosaur. Recently, trendy new chrome and plastic versions have opened in some cities to amuse patrons. Gum-chewing servers on roller skates wait on the customers. Every thing gleams and there is no clutter. It's definitely not the same sort of thing as Thiel Drug.