Wednesday, March 9, 2022

A vintage drugstore revived as an ice cream parlor

copied from USA Restaurants
" Price’s is located in the former Price’s Drugs building off Main Street in Pinson, AL. The building had been on this corner since 1898, then was remodeled in 1943. 40 years later, the original owners, the Price brothers, shut their doors permanently." (copied from Bham Now)."

I dropped by with a friend just to see what it looked like.  It has a totally nostalgic feel to it as you'll see in the pictures below. So much of what is on the shelves was left as is when they closed permanently in the 1980's. That is what I was told by the ice cream person.  

An E-Bay seller would hit a goldmine here.







I was familiar with a few of the products. I wasn't born until the 1950's so many of them aren't familiar to me. I tried Googling some of the products but couldn't find anything about many of them  . 😲

These shelves appear to have items not used for consumption. Shoe polish, plastic toy kits,
shoe dye
.

There's a section with tables where you can eat if you don't want to sit at the ice cream counter.

This is the ice cream counter, very memorable of what I've seen in vintage teen movies. There are several flavors of ice cream to choose from.  I chose vanilla soft serve.

To the left is what appears to be a hand crank ice cream freezer. We had a green wooden one when I was a kid.  Funny how long it lasted being made out of wood and wrapped with wire. To freeze the cream you have to add ice and salt to the barrel which would seem to be conducive to early rot. I'm seeing an old electric fan, several LP albums and a lantern.  I have no idea what the yellow contraption with 244 on it is.


The chips of course are new but the notebook paper isn't. THIS I remember.  The teacher would ask if you needed Supplies. Supplies included anything the school office sold that was needed to perform schoolwork i.e. paper, pencils, ink pens, crayons etc.  Notice closely that this paper is for a TOP HOLE tablet. That meant you added the paper from the top and not the side.  I had a top hole tablet that even had a compartment for two pencils.  The problem with the top hole was that if you dropped it, it would easily  disgorge all of its contents. That left its owner scurrying around picking up wayward paper.  Eventually it was uncool to have a Top Hole.


The things that they sold were pretty varied. Swim Fins, Not sure if that is underwear or swim trunks. My best guess would be swim trunks.  The faded green item appears to be a swimsuit. And just in case you forgot your tie on the way to an affair, pick one up at the drugstore.

You can find more about Price's at these links: Bham Now, Facebook, Trussville Tribune

That's it***