{"id":1078,"date":"2020-09-18T06:27:35","date_gmt":"2020-09-18T11:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/?p=1078"},"modified":"2020-09-18T06:28:07","modified_gmt":"2020-09-18T11:28:07","slug":"blondie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/blondie\/","title":{"rendered":"Blondie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


Blondie<\/big>
by Joe Stout<\/small>

<\/big><\/big><\/p>\n

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Times are a\u2019changin here in Greenfield.

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Fred\u2019s Xpress Pharmacy has opened in a new building on the new 4 lane highway\u00a0 just south in Greenfield.\u00a0 In 1998 Fred\u2019s bought out Belew Drugs, Greenfield Drugs, and Bradford Drugs in the neighboring town of Bradford and combined them into one pharmacy.\u00a0 They located in the Belew Drug building just south of the old Church of Christ building on Front St. in Greenfield for a period of time before this new building was completed.

In days gone by Belew Drugs was located on North Front where the new Community Bank of Greenfield is now located.\u00a0 Prior to that Belew Drugs was on the corner of Front and Broad St. just across from the Greenfield Banking Co.

Greenfield Drugs has had the same name as long as I can remember.\u00a0 Its last location before being bought out by Fred\u2019s was on Broad St. just behind the Greenfield Bank.\u00a0 In days gone by it was located down on the other corner of Front and \u201cSoup\u201d Streets.

When I was a child and a teenager Belew Drugs was known as Brasfield Drug Co and Gent Belew and Bert Adcock were the owner\/operators.\u00a0\u00a0 Mr. Gent was also the distributor for the \u201cMemphis Commercial Appeal.\u201d\u00a0 Mr. Gent gave me my first job delivering those papers, when I got my first bicycle, at about 9 or 10 years old.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard now to imagine, in today\u2019s inflated economy, that for my first job I received less than a dollar a week.

In those days both drug stores had a \u201csoda fountain.\u201d\u00a0 When I was a little older, at about 13 or 14\u00a0 years old, Mr. Bert and Gent gave me a job as \u201csoda jerk.\u201d\u00a0 Until you\u2019ve worked as a \u201csoda jerk\u201d all day Saturday until closing about 11 p.m. you don\u2019t know what \u2018tired\u2019 is.

We had 2 sinks to wash glasses and bowls in.\u00a0 One to wash with soap and the other to rinse.\u00a0 Of course the wash water would get dirty pretty fast.\u00a0 The rinse water would have to be changed many times during the day.\u00a0 Mr. Bert had a habit of making himself about a fourth glass of fountain coke several times a day.\u00a0 He would take one or two swallows and always pour the remainder in the sink.\u00a0 As soon as I had just prepared the rinse sink with fresh water\u00a0 I could always look forward to Mr. Bert dumping his coke in my fresh water.

Until I was about 25 years old my hair was so red it would put a fire engine to shame.\u00a0 Mr. Gent therefore nicknamed me \u201cBlondie\u201d.\u00a0 Don\u2019t ask me why.

They kept the ice cream frozen so hard it was very difficult to dip ice cream easily.\u00a0 I always thought Mr. Gent had eyes in the back of his head.\u00a0 He was usually behind the prescription counter in the back somewhat hidden from view.\u00a0 One day my best friend, John Ben (Benny) Nelson came in for an ice cream cone.\u00a0 One dip cones were a nickel in those days.\u00a0 Of course I was gonna give Benny a heaping dip.\u00a0 As I was working hard to fill the dipper with a big full dipper I heard Mr. Gent holler from behind the prescription counter, \u201cDon\u2019t break your arm Blondie\u201d ……………. I knew what he meant.\u00a0 Joe Stout.<\/div>\n
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The photo below is the Brasfield Drug Store some 25 years before I worked there.\u00a0 Mr. Gent is the 3rd from the left.\u00a0 Looks like he had hair then.\u00a0 The soda fountain is in the lower left corner.<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blondieby Joe Stout Times are a\u2019changin here in Greenfield. Fred\u2019s Xpress Pharmacy has opened in a new building on the new 4 lane highway\u00a0 just south in Greenfield.\u00a0 In 1998 Fred\u2019s bought out Belew Drugs, Greenfield Drugs, and Bradford Drugs in the neighboring town of Bradford and combined them into one pharmacy.\u00a0 They located in Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-gutenberg.php","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"full","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"author_meta":{"display_name":"MaryCarol","author_link":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/author\/marycarol\/"},"featured_img":null,"coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Uncategorized<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Uncategorized<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 6 years ago","modified":"Updated 6 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on September 18, 2020","modified":"Updated on September 18, 2020"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on September 18, 2020 6:27 am","modified":"Updated on September 18, 2020 6:28 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1079,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions\/1079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}