Lou’s View – April 21, 2016
The Absent Minded Man and the Druggist
by Lou Bernard
We all have our flaky moments, I guess. My daughter recently went out to the store and forgot her wallet. When my wife and I were adopting, I asked the social worker if the baby was a boy or a girl, in spite of the fact that we’d already discussed circumcision. We’ve all had those moments, is what I’m saying.
But most of ours don’t make the paper.
For one local man, one of those moments did make page two of the Clinton Democrat on May 20, 1886.
It began as an ordinary Sunday for Thomas C. Hilton, aged thirty-four. Hilton had been born in 1852 and grown up to become a pharmacist. He worked in a shop at 147 East Main Street, partnering with Edgar Heffner, another local pharmacist who later went on to be Lock Haven’s oldest mayor. Hilton lived down the road at 504 West Main Street with his wife Gertrude, whom he’d married in 1879, seven years earlier. And, as I mentioned, Hilton began by having what appeared to be a fairly normal day, working at his pharmacy in Lock Haven.
Meanwhile, down in Sugar Valley, a man was very sick. The newspaper didn’t record who he was, apparently in an effort to protect his privacy. (Simply not running the article on page two evidently never occurred to them.) The Democrat did say that he was from Loganton, which was called “Logansville” at the time. But otherwise, it gave no clues to his identity.
The article also didn’t specify the identity of the man sent to pick up medicine for the sick guy. Again, probably to avoid some embarrassment, which I still find funny as they could have just not run the entire article. But a man was sent up from Loganton to pick up medicine.
Hilton had him wait while he got the prescription. Pharmacies haven’t gotten any faster in the past century or so. So the customer browsed the store while the prescription was prepared.
“The medicine was prepared at Hilton’s Drug Store, while the gentleman waited for it,” the Clinton Democrat said. “The compounder, after putting the finishing touches on the label, wrapped the bottle up neatly and placed it on the counter in front of the customer, received the pay and turned his attention to the next person waiting.”
A normal, everyday transaction so far. Nothing too newsworthy. But as I’ve learned in the past several years, there were very few incidents so mundane that the newspapers wouldn’t run them, on the front page if necessary. Especially if it was otherwise a slow news week. The Loganton customer got his change, and ran out of the store in a hurry, eager to get back to the sick man and administer the medicine.
Except he forgot the medicine on the counter.
“Absent-Minded Man,” was the headline. The man began riding home, and it was only a few minutes later that Hilton noticed the bottle, still sitting on the counter.
“As soon as the clerk discovered the man’s mistake he dispatched a boy after him, but the lad could not find him,” the article read.
The customer got as far as Mill Hall before realizing what he’d done, and turning around. It could have been worse; he could have gotten all the way to Sugar Valley and had to come back. Let’s be honest here, Sugar Valley is barely accessible now. By horse in the old days, it could have been a serious hassle. The man returned from Mill Hall, and went back to the pharmacy.
“He did not look pleasant when he entered the drug store the second time,” said the Democrat,”And no doubt hired a mule the next day to kick him all over the township.”
Rough afternoon for the customer, and a weird, busy day for Hilton. It was the kind of thing they often ran in the newspaper back then, which is weird, but better than coverage of Donald Trump. And, since I’m getting a column out of it over a hundred years after it happened, maybe they had a point.
