Yet through it all - a name change, about a half-dozen different owners, cross-town move in the 1960s - the current owner of Westside Drug on South 31st Street said the venerable store continues to offer its clients old-fashioned service.
“We have a customer base here from years and years and years past,” said co-owner Jack Adkins. “It’s always been a unique store, and the location is real handy for the people on that side of Temple. We have delivery service all over the city. That’s something that no one does any more.”
It’s a good time to celebrate the only independently owned drugstore left in Temple, since this is National Pharmacy Week, said managing pharmacist Stan Drake. At one point, the city had several, named according to location - Westside, Northside, Southside.
Walking through the drug store, Drake points out memorabilia like a museum curator. An antique safe, adding machine and bedpan take you back in time. And a wooden yardstick from bygone days has the phone number, PR8-2773, stenciled on it. That number works today. The only difference, rather than all numerals, the prefix begins with two letters, a practice that ended about 40 years ago.
Eva Kimble’s grandfather built the original store on Avenue H and 25th Street for entrepreneur H.S. Woods around 1916. He dubbed it Woods Drugs. The Santa Fe Hospital was “booming” back then, Ms. Kimble said, and the drugstore thrived.
After graduating Temple High in 1949, Ms. Kimble went to work there under a new owner, J.P. Charlton. She sold everything from sandwiches to ice cream, Coke to cosmetics. Working part-time for years, the holiday rush was exciting.
“All the men who didn’t buy their wives a Christmas present would come in on Christmas Eve and we could sell anything in the store we hadn’t been able to sell all year,” Ms. Kimble said. “I’ll never forget that.”
After two more ownership changes, the Leonard brothers, Billy and Jack, bought Westside in 1961.
But when Scott & White made plans to build on 31st Street, Billy Leonard said they decided to relocate also. Word on the street, Temple’s growth was headed that way. A new shopping center was under construction, and the Leonard brothers secured a lease there. Almost overnight, Westside Drug left its home of 50 years.
“We closed that sucker down on Saturday night, opened Monday morning. There was no sleep at all that weekend,” said brother Billy. “When we got there, we took a tiger by the tail. We were the first retail establishment on that end of town.”
That end of town today is packed with traffic and all sorts of businesses. And although the city has grown to a point where the store is no longer on the west end of town, owner Adkins says the name, Westside Drug, will remain the same, phone number included.
