My husband and I recently bought our first home together in a somewhat small town in Texas.
A Sign of the Times in Small Town America?
Now McKinney is not tiny but it boasts tons of small town history and one of those wonderful old time town squares. The historic district is one of the things that attracted us to McKinney to begin with. For years we had driven to the historic town square to shop at the numerous antique stores and stay at the various B & B's. It wasn't far from Dallas where we used to live but taking the day to go there was for us the equivalent of an actual road trip when energy prices started going through the roof.
This is a pretty conservative area. The streets around the town square are lined with old houses and lots of McCain/Palin signs, but there are more than a few Obama/Biden signs as well. This is Texas after all:-)
There is a lot of Texas historyassociated with McKinney and the Smith Brothers Pharmacy is a part of it. Last night we were in downtown McKinney having dinner and participating in the town's first "Ghost Walk" We were also admiring the way the square looked after the construction that had been ongoing for several months when we noticed that the drug store was closed!
"Unless the community moves quickly to help, Smith Bros Pharmacy will be gone forever and McKinney will lose a huge part of its historical heritage, a columnist says."
"In 1859, Dr Benjamin Smith, a member of the famous Peters Colony from Tennessee. established Smith Bros. Pharmacy. The good doctor, a respected horseman rode many miles around the McKinney area making house calls.
A move here, a fire there and McKinney ’s longest active business finally settled on the east town square where it has continued for 100 years."
Next month the business would have celebrated 150 years on this small town square! This is just so sad in so many ways. So much history is lost when something like this happens.
The landmark street sign is one of the most notable constants over the years of change in the face of the downtown."
"What Happened?
There are two factors that together have become very high hurdles for the Mosiers. Recently, they had to write off over $150,000 in unpaid credits to local citizens. Until 2005, the store maintained a large sign and carry customer base. People stopped paying on time and many never did. Some owed in the thousands for prescriptions they received on credit.
The big blow however, was the loss of 90% of their prescription based business. They had to transfer their orders to more accessible locations. Many of these customers could not make the hard to access town center due to age and infirmity."
Did my husband and I even THINK about using this pharmacy for our prescription? To be honest it never crossed our minds. I guess we simply assumed that because they had been there for so long they must have had a good business. We shop around all the big box pharmacies to try and get the cheapest price for our various prescriptions.We never thought about giving the "little guy" a chance.. Shame on us.
And yet we found out something we never knew about this little small town pharmacy. From our local paper-"By the way, cross-reference Smith Bros and McKinney, Texas on Google and you will read about how the Mosiers put McKinney in national headlines by being one of the very first to sell prescriptions at no profit to uninsured and underinsured. They were able to save one customer from paying $240 and instead, charged $16.68. They even delivered for free!"
These people were ahead of the curve and yet they were simply doing what small town business owners had been doing for years-helping to take care of their own.
We are now part of the attempt to save this small town pharmacy. We know there are huge issues facing this country right now and that perhaps in the big picture trying to save this little piece of history shouldn't be a big deal but in this day and age of huge corporations running everything it will give us some measure of comfort to try to save a "little guy" that is still out there because to us that symbolizes the current presidential race-returning the country to the little guys who REALLY own it.