Soda Fountain

There was a time when people could walk to their neighborhood village to shop, get a haircut, go to church or order a pizza. But the suburban sprawl that started after World War II forced Americans to go everywhere by car.Traditional, walkable communities are mostly a thing of the past, yet some -- such as Woodlawn -- still exist and are doing well."

DREAMING entrepreneurial dreams, a hairdresser I know wondered aloud about the kind of business that could work well in tandem with a hair salon. "A coffee bar," she said. "Yeah, a coffee bar would work. Or how about a sushi bar? Or a book store maybe. How about an ice cream parlor?"Sorry, my dear. That's been done.You can find such a place in Locust Point. (But you can't find it on Mondays. It's closed Mondays. Scott Erickson, the Orioles hunk, went there for a haircut on a Monday, and the women of the shop have been sick about missing him ever since.

As pharmacist and owner of the S. P. Jeppi Popular Pharmacy, Samuel Patrick "Doc" Jeppi was considered the source of medical wisdom to nearby West Baltimore residents and many believed there were few ailments he couldn't cure.All of Doc Jeppi's remedies weren't pills and prescriptions. For instance, when a customer came into his drugstore suffering with a toothache, he'd suggest an ice pack at home instead of an over-the-counter medicine."Pharmacists in those days were looked upon as being doctors," said his granddaughter, Caroline Jeppi of Baltimore.

Edward J. SimonPhysicianXTCDr. Edward J. Simon, who once stopped for a soda in Harford County and decided to open his medical practice there, died Thursday at his Havre de Grace home of complications from diabetes. He was 78.It was in 1942 that the young Dr. Simon set out from New York, his native state, to pursue a wartime job offer as a company doctor at Glenn L. Martin Co. in Middle River.They stopped in Havre de Grace at a soda fountain -- at what is now City Pharmacy. They liked the town, and learned there was a shortage of doctors because of World War II. Also, busy Aberdeen Proving Ground was nearby.

Depending upon their ages, Baltimoreans remember the dry-goods temple at Howard and Lexington streets as either Bernheimer-Leader or the May Co. or Hecht-May or the Hecht Co.The department store opened in May 1925 and remained a stalwart of the Howard Street shopping district until the retail scene got so bad that the store had to close.Now comes word that the corporation that owns the Rite Aid pharmacies, has purchased the store.There is something odd about Rite Aid purchasing the old Hecht outlet.

It's not too often you still hear the whirring and grinding noise produced by a milkshake machine.Every fast-food outlet sells something called a shake, but milk is not necessarily one of the ingredients. Fast-food shakes seem to have more to do with joint compound than what a cow provides.Milkshakes were a personal thing in the days when every corner seemed to have a drug store with a soda fountain. Some places made them to perfection, others served ones that were mediocre or flat. You either loved those made at Read's drug stores or detoured to places like Schwaab's, the fountain and sweet shop Waverly, or to Davidov's, a drug store in North Bend.

Of all the patent medicines and elixirs that Baltimore inventiveness has given to the commercial marketplace, has any been as successful as Noxzema?A long-overdue shrine to the Baltimore-born eczema cure opens this week at the Baltimore Museum of Industry on Key Highway. It is a re-creation of the circa-1911 front window of pharmacist George Bunting's North Avenue drug store where the nationally famous skin cream was initially sold.Bunting, who developed Noxzema about 1911 (the name means "sure knocks eczema")

Q: Our teen-age children want to convert our home's so-called club basement into an entertainment area, complete with soda fountain, oversized video screen and all sorts of similar trappings. We're not opposed to giving the kids a space of their own, but we do generally prefer traditional, if not conservative, furnishings. How can the basement be designed so that it blends with the rest of our home?A: I haven't a clue as to how to integrate a high-tech, youthful environment downstairs with traditional styling upstairs.

Morgan Millard Restaurant Gallery, 4800 Roland Ave., (410) 889-0030. AE, MC, V. Open every day for lunch and dinner. No-smoking area: yes. Wheelchair-accessible: no. Prices: appetizers, $2.50-$5.95; entrees, $8.95-$18.95. The old Morgan & Millard lunch counter was a hard act to follow. It was like the soda fountains of my youth, with good homemade soups and sandwiches and, of course, soda fountain treats -- real milkshakes and ice cream sodas. I've heard people refer to the Morg, as it was known, as a tearoom.

The last Coke gurgled through the fountain dispenser Tuesday afternoon. No more milkshakes and malts, chocolate sodas and shrimp salad sandwiches.The magnificent marble soda fountain at Medical Arts Pharmacy is retired at age 65. Its Vermont and Tennessee-quarried components are being disassembled and taken to the Baltimore Museum of Industry. A place where dozens of office workers, pensioners and school children once congregated will be enveloped into an expanded pharmacy, which continues to do business here.

For sale: the contents of a 1940s corner South Baltimore soda fountain shop, including marble counter, antique telephone, seating booths, Coca-Cola signs, art deco shelving and the recipe for lemon phosphate. Asking price: $75,000, with the buyer moving all the fixtures. Nearly four years ago, Mark Trunk and his wife, Penny C. George, decided to lease the Olde Malt Shop at East Fort Avenue and Webster Street. During afternoons and evenings, they served milk shakes, snowballs, malts and ice cream cones in one of Baltimore's surviving neighborhood soda fountain settings.

My friend and neighbor Nick Prevas explained the other evening about how he became historian of the local Greek community. He was 13 years old and at a cousin's funeral. His father, Michael, was greeting the assembled family members and told him to call everyone aunt or uncle. Then, after the wake was over, his father drew him a diagram, a family tree. Nick caught genealogy fever on the spot and that soon morphed into his current opus, House of God ... Gateway to Heaven. It is the centennial history of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, but it is really the story of the people in that congregation.

The sisters walk in to the Fort Avenue ice cream shop, white hair freshly curled and firmly in place, looking like twins despite the seven years between them. The man behind the counter knows what to get them without even asking, because they've known him since he was a little boy, and they could tell some stories on him if they wanted. Still, Earl Gallion can't resist teasing them. "I ain't got no chocolate, dumpling," he tells Elizabeth Hall, 79 - knowing what she really wants, what she always wants, is four vanilla milkshakes to go. She'll keep them in the freezer, and dip into them little by little, until she and her 86-year-old sister walk up Jackson Street for more.

Sidney R. "Doc" Klavens, who owned and operated a neighborhood drugstore across from Cross Street Market for 40 years, died of heart failure Monday at Sinai Hospital. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 84. A Baltimore native raised on Park Heights Avenue, Mr. Klavens was a 1937 graduate of City College. After his graduation from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy in 1942, he enlisted in the Navy and served as a pharmacist's mate at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital and in Bremerton, Wash.

I OFTEN HEAR people chatting about how they search out the best martini, Manhattan or cosmopolitan, an incredible crab cake or even slaw or french fries. I confess to being a chocolate soda devotee, which I think is even more rare than decent Baltimore peach cake. By chocolate soda I mean the confection served in a classic, tapered soda fountain glass (real glass a must), with a long spoon. Inside is a rhapsody of fountain soda water, a little half-and-half, chocolate syrup and vanilla ice cream.

If your kids don't know what a real malted milkshake tastes like or if you just need a rush of nostalgia, hurry yourselves to Hampden and check out Hometown Girl's newly installed old-fashioned soda fountain. Owners Chris Swift and Mary Pat Andrea have built a thriving business catering to hometown whims, first with their store Celebrate Baltimore at Harborplace and then at Hometown Girl, an eclectic store on 36th Street. Now they are following in the footsteps of Andrea's grandparents, offering a place to gather for ice-cream sodas, malted milkshakes, Italian sodas and even hot-fudge sundaes.

THE CONCEPT of daylight-saving time did not arrive smoothly at the Guilford Avenue house where I was raised. There were six young children to be put to bed at an early hour; getting us quieted down while the light still shone through the shades tormented my mother. Beside, it was fun to stay up and observe the customs and rhythms of that house in the later evening. I've mentioned before that some of my relatives were confirmed morning people, but that didn't inhibit them from their 9 p.m. rituals.

Alfred H. Alessi, a pharmacist who owned a well-known Towson drugstore and soda fountain, died Wednesday at St. Joseph Medical Center from complications after surgery. He was 83 and lived in Hamilton. From 1968 to 1984, in his white shirt and clip-on bow tie, Mr. Alessi presided over Asbill Pharmacy at Chesapeake and Washington avenues, an institution recalled for its soda fountain, its collection of repeat customers and as a source of local news and Baltimore County political and legal gossip.

Hampden has always been a place where you can step back into Baltimore's past, and nowhere better than at Hometown Girl, a gift and accessories shop. In its 20th year in Baltimore, Hometown Girl has moved to new and expanded quarters at 1001 W. 36th St. Cafe Hon is expanding into the space it left. Looking for a big-hair wig or a marble step cleaning kit? You can find them here. You can also get painted screens, Maryland foods for gifts, books by Baltimore authors and many more items with local ties.

I lived in Philadelphia for several years, but I never quite understood why-heresy coming here-a Philly cheese steak is so much better than any other cheese steak. Aficionados who do care, though, can find the real thing at Federal Hills newest Irish pub, MaGerk's, at 1061 S. Charles St. Owners Paul and John Dolaway are from Philadelphia, and that's where they get the rolls for their popular cheese steaks. Other hot sellers are the chicken cheese steak and the MaGerk: cooked salami, fried onions, white American cheese, tomato and "special sauce" on a kaiser roll.