Good to the last gulp

Source: Muskegon Chronicle
Today at 4 p.m., they'll turn off the spigots on the soda machine at Montague's Todd Pharmacy for the last time.

Coca Cola will take back the soda fountain equipment they've leased to the pharmacy, and the rest will be sold.

There will be no more phosphates, no more malts, no more ice cream sodas.

Next week, patrons can serve themselves coffee, take a doughnut from a box if one of the employees picks some up from a bakery, and sit for a spell to visit, but that's all. It won't be the same.

Lunch will not be served.

The welcoming ambiance of a small-town soda fountain where people gather to complain about taxes, to announce births and graduations and to shoot the breeze about everything and nothing will be history.

Like gas stations where teen-age boys would wash your windshield, and like grocery stores with clerks who tipped you off when the fresh asparagus was coming in, soda fountains have become the dinosaurs of small-town America.

A few remain Lipka's in Montague still has one and so does Pfaff's Pharmacy in Grand Haven but they are rapidly approaching extinction.

Todd's end began when the place was sold a year ago.

When drugstores change hands, the health department requires the soda fountains to be brought up to modern codes.

For Todd's, that meant tens of thousands of dollars in new plumbing and equipment, extensive work that would be far too costly given the slim profits on egg salad sandwiches and hot tea.

"It's the end of an era," said Mary Mahoney on Wednesday as she reminisced with friends. "We're going to miss it."

Mahoney is among the area residents who have gathered at Todd's soda fountain for years. Like people gathering for a good friend's wake, they'll be there today, too. 'This is where I came to talk'

Going for coffee got a lot of old people and new stay-at-home mothers out of their houses in the morning. It gave a lot of lonely people something to look forward to. It gave people like Mahoney naturally gregarious, involved and funny one more place to spread friendship and share a joke.

Mahoney remembers taking her daughter, Jennifer, to Todd's in the morning and sitting her in her car seat on the counter, where she drew the attention of the other patrons. Jennifer is 27 now.

Todd's was the first outing for Mahoney's elderly mother, Helen Jaunese, after her leg had been amputated.

"When she came in, everyone clapped for her," Mahoney said.

One of the other regulars at Todd's said the soda fountain is a place where "you know people's first names and not their last, but it doesn't matter."

They are familiar to you. You know about their lives. You worry about them if they don't show up.

Talking around a public table is safe. There are no family members or close friends to judge you or offer unwanted advice.

"When my granddaughter died, this is where I came to talk," said Vicki Bosse.

Her son's little girl, Andre, was murdered in June 1997 in one of Muskegon County's most horrific crimes.

"People would just listen. They gave me the support I needed," Bosse said.

Like Mahoney's, her history with Todd's is long.

She can remember taking her son to the soda fountain when he was a preschooler, but he was a rambunctious sort and would get into things.

The other people at the fountain would help her keep him occupied, and they'd help put things back if he got things off the shelves.

Decades later, the Todd's morning crew helped her put her life back together.

"They helped me here when we lost Andre," she said.

But then recently, she took the joyful news of the birth a new granddaughter to the Todd's crowd.

"We've shared the bad times and the good times here," she said.

"I don't know what we'll do."

"We'll have to go to a bar," quipped Mahoney.

A town square
On a typical morning at Todd's, there might be a group of men playing cards at a table while groups of women hold their coffee klatches nearby. An adult foster-care home director might have brought her ladies into the store for an outing. A driver education teacher might stop by and buy his students Cokes.

Politics were discussed. The Wildcats' Friday night defensive performance was analyzed. Discussions ensued over which college Junior or Sissy should go to.

Mahoney recalled summer residents who would drop off their mentally impaired son for a bit of independence. The soda fountain was a place where they knew he'd be safe.

The soda fountain crew for 40 years has kept track of Montague's comings and goings births, deaths, cancers, cures, love stories, job promotions, kids who were off at war and the doings of Nancy Anne Fleming.

They still talk about Nancy Anne, the 1961 Miss America who, they say, got her public start as a waitress at Todd's.

Her picture still graces the wall. She's properly attired in a white uniform, is shown serving a sundae to a customer, and no doubt knew how to count backward to make change in the proper way.

One woman, sitting Thursday, enjoying a sundae just like that pictured 40 years ago, said she and her family have frequented Todd's a few times each week for decades.

It was quick and convenient, and for families wanting to do something together, it was an economical meal out, she said.

Its closure is a great loss to the small town, she said.

And while some folks stopped by a few times a week, Octavius Bosse, Vicki's husband, said he came once, twice or three times a day for a cup of coffee from his nearby job at the VFW hall.

Fred Grice of Rothbury, who bought Todd's a year ago, said management worked hard with the health department to keep the fountain open. But in the end, they just wouldn't allow what the business could afford.

"We'd probably have had to strip the place and start over. We couldn't justify the expense.

"It was a plus for us a good traffic draw," he said of the fountain.

The grill will remain open, and ice cream will be served for as long as the food lasts up to closing time at 4 p.m. today.

The long stainless steel soda fountain with its swivel stools and mirrored wall will probably be replaced by shelving to hold more Hallmark products, Grice said.

Cards, vases and bric-a-brac will take up the space formerly occupied by people.

"It is really too bad," Grice said.
Source: Muskegon Chronicle