Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

When I was a younger man, I marveled at the changes my dad lived through.

I am no longer a younger man, and now I marvel at the changes I have lived through. Here is just one.

This shot is from Schnucks Supermarket, taken a couple weeks ago.

One of my first jobs was stocking shelves at Buscher's Pharmacy in Ferguson, Missouri. It was 2 hours after school on weekdays, and then however long it took me to sweep the parking lot on Saturday mornings. Got a white envelope containing $15 cash every week.

Best part of my job was hanging out with Jerome Cohen, the evening pharmacist. He showed me how to read prescriptions, how to break the cost code on the pharmaceutical containers, and I watched him mix up all manner of concoctions and type labels on the manual typewriter. These days, pharmacists rarely mix anything - they count pills and put them in plastic bottles. There are a few "compounding" pharmacies around if you need that sort of thing.

But prescriptions are not what this is about. What this is about is menstruation.

Mr. Buscher, the proprietor, was a product of his middle-class American society. He decided he had to stock pads (tampons were not around in the late 1950s), but they couldn't be left out on the shelves where just anybody could see them. So part of my job was to put Kotex and Modess boxes in plain brown paper bags, tape the bags closed, and use a grease pencil to write on the box "M  45" or "K  45" as appropriate to differentiate Kotex from Modess. Price was 45 cents either way.

I guess if a new customer didn't know the M and K codes, they would ask the clerk (always a female behind the counter) in whispers, "Do you have any Kotex?"

Incidentally, Buscher's Pharmacy stocked rubbers too. But they were in a drawer in the back, and you had to ask for them. I fantasized that someday I would need to buy some, and I feared having to ask for them.