Korner Drug History

Korner Drug History

In June 1915 a church was built on the corner of Lake Drive and Court Street and was named Irene Cole Memorial Church.  On a very cold January night in 1942, a terrible fire broke out at the church and the building was destroyed.  My friend and I were in the Abigail Theater, which was next door to the church on Court Street when suddenly the movie was stopped and all were asked to evacuate the theater.   Our little fire department did the very best they could to battle this fire in horrible conditions.   It was so cold that fire hose froze, the water freezing right in the hoses.   The firemen clothes froze stiff while they were still wearing them.   I saw it so I know it is true.  The church was able to build a new building on Front Street and is now the First Baptist Church. 

 The location of the property where the church once stood was a prime location.  Lake Drive, then known as Mayo Trail, connected Paintsville and Pikeville with Prestonsburg being right in the middle.   The bus station stood where Community Trust stands today and the Floyd County Courthouse stood where our new courthouse is.  The town’s only red light was there as was a large filling station which was located where the old First National Bank building still stands.  And the Abigail Theater was right up the street!   A business would be an excellent choice to build on the site. 

   The church property was purchased by Banner Meade and John Allen.  Together they built a two story cream colored brick building.  The first floor consisted originally of three sections and the upper story was sectioned into several rooms.   The corner section of the building's first floor was rented by Fred and Ethel Burke Dickerson.   Fred and Ethel opened a fountain and they named it Fountain Korner.   It quickly became the town's gathering place, a place where you could get a burger and milkshake, magazines and perfumes.   This fountain had a large curved arc front window, from which the comings and goings of everyone in town could be seen.   In the mornings before the sun rose, the business men in town would meet at the Korner.   They would gather for good food and coffee and to play Liar's Poker, a game with dollar bills.  By lunch time, the ladies of Prestonsburg would meet for iced tea and spicy talk, sitting at the tables at the curved window.  In the afternoons my friends and I would gather at the Korner and the tables near that window became favorite seating places of many of us, including me!  We always tried to get a table at the window before going to the movie matinee.   The store was an instant success, opening each day at 5am and closing at 11pm, seven days a week. 

  When my friends and I would go to a movie at the Abigail, which we often did, we would always stop at Fountain Korner to get our Cokes, and then we would buy our popcorn at the movie.   One Sunday evening as we walked up onto the cool diamond patterned front stoop, Ethel was locking the door.   We later learned that Fred had shot and killed James Roark, a former classmate of mine.   In court, the verdict was self- defense.   Neither Fred nor Ethel went back to the store after that.   Ethel eventually went back many years later.  Ethel’s two brothers, Joe and Johnny, had returned from World War II where they served overseas.   Both had found jobs and had married – Joe to Leslie Comstock and Johnny to Helen May – the girls were cousins.  So the couples bought the Korner and went to work.   Soon it really was the place to meet for a friendly welcome and the food was delicious.  (I soon would be joining the fun!)

  In April 1949 their older brother, Hern, returned from Germany after 6 years in the Army.   He had learned photography while in Germany.  He joined his brothers as a full partner.  They each had a shift at the store, morning, afternoon, evening.   They would rotate shifts weekly.  No brothers were closer, each had their job to do and they respected each other’s opinions.  Their oldest brother and his wife, Heber and Minta, both worked at Nunnery Grocery Store where Minta was the manager and Heber was a meat cutter.  He made the best meat loaf!  Each morning all four brothers would gather for  coffee before opening for the day.

  I mentioned my friend earlier – she was Mary Sue Prince Herold.   She was married to a distant cousin of mine and they had two children.  While in the service he decided he wanted a divorce.  Most of our friends and relatives had moved to Ypsilanti Michigan to work at defense plants.  Mary Sue stayed and moved in with her mother who watched her children while she worked.   It also allowed us to go to the movies – that was our favorite thing to do.  In fact it was the only thing to do!

  I was working at Leader Department Store in July 1949 when a customer came in.  His name was Hern Burke and I recognized him as I had known his family since school days.  I spent many nights at their family home in Blackbottom with his sisters Ruby and Goldie.  He had returned home in April after six years in the Army.  He served three years in combat in Europe and two years in Germany.  While in Germany an old man taught him the art of photography.   While talking to him at The Leader I learned that he had seen me coming down the steps at First Methodist Church one Sunday morning and that he had a darkroom in the basement of his mother’s smokehouse.  I was always making pictures, so I was glad to have them developed here instead of mailing them away.    Anyway, we had our first date in July 1949.  It was a date in which we spent no money; we went first to the old Prestonsburg Hospital in West Prestonsburg to see Johnny and Helen’s newborn baby boy  - John Jr.  The date was July 29, 1949. After visiting the new parents at the hospital, we went to the Prestonsburg Drive In, located here in Blackbottom.   The Drive In gave businesses two free passes if they would place an advertising sign in your window.   So we got 2 free passes, we fixed us a Coke at the Korner and popped some corn and Granny and Papaw's house. From then on we were together two to three times a week. 

  Joe was accepted in to the pharmacy school in Cincinnati that fall and he, Leslie and Jeanne moved to Cincinnati.   In October they wanted to come home to see the family, especially his sister Goldie and her family who were visiting from Michigan.   Joe and Leslie had no car and Hern’s new Pontiac had just come in, so we met them at the bus station in Lexington.  I guess that was my proposal, for Hern said, “Let’s get married and have Joe & Leslie be our witnesses.”  We got married in a Methodist parsonage in Mount Sterling on October 7, 1949.  Funny thing is that we kept it a secret, and I’m not sure why, we definitely were old enough.   The week after we married an auction was held of the property from North Lake Drive to the river, the property where we have resided our entire marriage.  Hern had sent his money to his mother while he was in the service so he had enough to buy the 100’ foot lot.  We built the house that I have enjoyed for 64 years.  As I write this, Hern has been gone for 31 years, April, 28, 1983. 

While Joe was gone to pharmacy school, it fell upon Hern and Johnny to keep the store up and running.   Everything was running ok with only two brothers working at the store, until Johnny developed rheumatic fever.   He was admitted to a V.A. hospital in Louisville.  This unfortunately led to Joe having to leave pharmacy school and come back home to resume his tasks at Fountain Korner.  I believe this happened in November 1949.  In the first part of December it was decided that Hern would take Papaw Burke and Helen to Louisville to visit Johnny in the hospital.  Of course without the Mountain Parkway back then, it was a trek of about 7 hours.  Naturally it would be necessary to spend the night so that’s when we told our parents of our marriage.   Neither family wanted us to rent a house, but offered us a place to stay with them while we saved money to build a house on the lot Hern had purchased earlier.  We borrowed $5,000 which paid for the materials.  Hern and our dads built the house.  My brother came home from Cleveland and did the electrical work.   We paid Nelson Baldridge $100.00 to sand the hard wood floors and Bill Holbrook built the chimney.  Soon other houses were being built, and vacant lots were all taken up.  When Joe and Leslie moved back home from Cincinnati, they too moved in with Granny and PaPaw.   They brought with them the first TV set that I have seen and I believe it was the first set in Prestonsburg.   It had two stations out of Huntington and on Saturday nights we would gather together to watch wrestling.  You should have seen PaPaw and his nephew Harry Burke, Harry Robert’s dad, get down in the floor in front of the TV and wrestle! 

  We stayed with Granny and PaPaw Burke the most as PaPaw as wasn’t doing well.  So as my welcome into the Fountain Korner family, I inherited the job of making the potato salad.  Granny had been making it since her sons bought the Fountain.  She helped me with it until we moved into our house.  I was still working at The Leader so I got all the ingredients ready the night before and then mixed the salad dressing before going to work.  I made one to two gallons each week on Mondays and Thursdays.   The recipe was 6-8 pounds of potatoes, pickles, onion, pimento, salad dressing, celery, carrots – no mustard.  And a secret ingredient.   I did this from 1950 to 1985, continuing even after Hern’s passing in 1983. 

  I quit work in November 1952 and became a full time mother on April 2, 1953.  What a beautiful baby girl we had!  She was such a daddy’s girl too!   As she got a little older, I added other duties for the Fountain; I made hot dog sauce and homemade pies.   The chili sauce was 15 pounds of hamburger, gallon of kidney beans, gallon of ketchup, onions and plenty of spices.  Leslie made the famous pimento cheese, no where could you find any better, especially when she could make it with commodity cheese.  I also made 4 homemade pies a week,  a fruit pie and a cream pie, twice a week.  Customers stood in line to get seated at the Fountain.  Later, the GE Store, which occupied the center of the building, closed down.  So the wall was torn down and Fountain Korner was enlarged.  In addition to the fountain, our family added a restaurant at the other end of the building.  The restaurant served hot meals, pinto beans and chicken and dumplings  but it didn’t affect the popularity of Fountain Korner.

  In addition to his duties at Fountain Korner, Hern was also a very popular photographer and he still had his developing to do each Friday.  Eventually he outgrew his mother’s smokehouse basement darkroom and rented a space in the Town Center Building, about where Dr. Hyden’s office used to be.  He had more space and money and was able to buy more equipment.  One item that I was glad to get was a printer.  Every Friday night Hern would bring home all the prints and negatives that he had developed that day.  We would spread 20 – 40 rolls of pictures out on the floor.  We held the film to the light and matched the pictures.  When each roll had matched pictures, I cut the negatives apart, added them up, put them in a photo envelope, priced them and started on the next roll.  We usually finished this task around midnight and I had to go into my job at The Leader at 9am on Saturday morning.  Hern and his brothers still rotated shifts, so some Saturdays it was Hern’s turn to open up at 5 am.  

Hern’s photo reputation increased, so his business grew to include portraits, weddings and accident scenes.  He did several deer shots during hunting season, but he didn’t like that.  He said their eyes seemed to say, “Why would you shoot me?”  But it was a bad part of his profession.

In early December 1956 at about 4 am we got a call that the store was on fire.  Mark Reed, a friend of the brothers, stopped by every morning to get his Lexington paper from the stack left on the front stoop.  He felt the heat of the brick and rushed to the Fire Department.  We had a knowledgeable fire department and upon arrival at the scene they knew to not fling open the doors.  If they had the building would have exploded.  The beloved circular window in the front didn’t even have a crack in it, but the store itself was destroyed.   There was a large display of dolls over the fountain.  Their little faces were melted, they looked so unhappy as they were to be some little girl’s Christmas gift.  The clock beside the dolls melted too.  It hurt to see all the damage.  It was so hot inside the store that the patent medicine tablets such as aspirin disintegrated inside the bottles with the labels shrunken and falling off.  All the beautifully colored lipsticks melted leaving a red waxy trail.  All the display cases and wall cases had to be refinished due to the smoke and water damage.  The insurance company declared nothing could be saved and as they were there inspecting the damage they picked up a Little Golden Book.  Hern said, “I told them my baby had been wanting this book for Christmas.”   The inspector gave the book to Hern.  Della was 3 ½ years old at the time and still has the book.  After the fire, the incoming merchandise was moved over to the photography store in the Town Center Building and the Christmas buying season was salvaged as much as possible.   We were able to keep the bills paid and have Santa come to our children.   They stayed there until the Fountain was able to be used again.  In the aftermath of the fire it was discovered to be arson.   Four Prestonsburg High School boys broke through a small window in the storage room.  They took smaller items, watches being the most expensive.  It amounted to a few hundred dollars.  As they left, they set fire to the wrapping paper.  The paper smoldered but did not burn so that made that part of the clean-up easier, but the smoke odor was so strong and lingered for years.   Thank God for fire insurance!  The guilty ones were found and punished and most of the stolen good were returned.  The Korner had to be redone from top to bottom with new paint and new tile floors.  All the nice wooden cabinets were ruined and had to be refinished, which took some time.  Ackerman's Repair Shop did all the cabinet work.  The barstools were screwed into the floor from the basement ceiling. 

    February 1957.  The historic flood hit Prestonsburg hard.  No one ever dreamed or expected the amount of destruction leveled on the area.  It rained and rained and then more rain, swelling The Big Sandy River and all the streams in Pike and Floyd Counties.   In Prestonsburg the main part of the city began at the corner of Court Street and N. Lake Drive, around the only red light.  Fountain Korner was on the higher side of the street and First National Bank was on the opposite side of the street on a much lower corner.  A large drain was in the middle of the street and it carried out all the water that drained from the hills surrounding the city. Lots of times in the past this drainage system struggled to carry all the water and it often got clogged with debris.  Typically the firemen would wade in and unclogged the debris but this time the flooding was coming from the other side of town, from The Big Sandy and the open sewer lines.   The streets soon began to flood, overflowing businesses and homes.   The First National Bank flooded before Fountain Korner, as the corner where Fountain Korner is was much higher.  Eventually the flood water reached the store, and stretched to the top of the doors and the newly painted walls.  Remember the cabinets that I mentioned from the fire?   Well, they had just been completed and were soon to be delivered back to the store.  In fact, some had already been delivered to Granny and Papaw's house.  So luckily all of those custom cabinets had not been placed back in the store and they were not damaged in the flood.  That would have been a costly repair as we did not have flood insurance.  The waters got in every business on Court Street from the Fountain to Wright Brothers Barber Shop and in the other direction to the Post Office.   It reached Sparks Bus Station and almost to the top of the telephone building.  I got a call from Hern at 4 am.  He and the brothers were at Brother Heber’s store eating bologna and crackers.  They were safe and he told me of the damage uptown.  The phones soon went out and were out for several days.  The brothers could not get home in Blackbottom but they knew we were safe and likewise we knew they were ok.  They had worked furiously to pack up the store and move it upstairs, and they got all the merchandise moved.  The camera store and darkroom across the street wasn’t as fortunate.   They packed up as many cameras as they could and developing supplies into our large car, a Chrysler New Yorker, and brought them here.  As the flood waters rose, I would keep moving that car to keep it and our merchandise safe.  We lost all of our printers and larger items and some photos that belonged to customers.   We lost some recital pictures and sad to say, some wedding photos.  Soon when it was obvious that there was nothing anyone could do, Hern, Joe and Johnny were brought home down Lake Drive in a boat. 

  Hutsinpillar’s Drug was located down the street, about where Clyde Burchett’s Jewelry Store was located.  Around 1960 the third partition of the store was removed and the Burkes bought that section.   They bought Hutch’s Drug Store and moved it in their building on the corner of Court Street and North Lake Drive and renamed the business Fountain Korner Drug.  As an extra bonus from that transaction, we acquired the Fostoria Crystal account which was very popular with the ladies.  At the time a Fostoria cup cost 90 cents and a plate cost $1.50.  The store by this time was a major hub in the flow of life in Prestonsburg. I remember Hutsinpillar as a very kind man and a quiet man and gentleman.  He taught Sunday School at the newly built Community Methodist Church in Blackbottom.  In the 1960's and 70's,  Fountain Korner Drug continued to be a gathering place, a hub of activity and commerce in Prestonsburg.  The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas our little town transformed into a beehive of activity.  Eastern Kentucky folks came to Prestonsburg for their shopping and no trip was complete without a trip to Fountain Korner.  I was at Korner Drug helping dad gear up for the Christmas shopping season.   Early in the fall sales women from Revlon, Max Factor, and Canon Cameras would start to appear to take our Christmas gift giving order.   I believe it was a mix of bravery and insight, so much was at stake!   If you by too much cologne that turns out to be stinky, then you're going to have some expensive alcohol.    Or if you choose stuffed animals that the kids don't connect with, then you've got dirty, dusty teddy bears come spring.  I always helped Ethel unpack the perfume shipments, the gift sets of Jovan Musk and Love's Baby Soft.   The expensive bottles of Chanel No. 5 or No. 2, I wasn't allow to touch those.   Windsong, Charlie, Jean Nate', Cachet were all so popular.  For men I remember Hi Karate, English Leather, Old Spice and Brut.   It was a tedious job, counting to make sure the shipment was correct, then using the price gun to affix the price on each bottle.  One of my favorite jobs was to wrap all the Russell Stover candy that First Commonwealth Bank would buy for their very best customers.   I remember cases stacked upon cases that were just waiting for me to wrap after school in that dusty store room behind the pharmacy. Scissors were always in high demand, and always getting lost.  One day after a long search for scissors dad got a piece of twine and tied them to a post in the pharmacy.   Satisfied, he walked away firm in the knowledge that his prized scissors would never been taken!   Imagine his horror when later he went to look for them and lo and behold; someone had used the scissors to cut the twine.   Laughter filled the store as we watched him storm up to Arrowood's to buy a chain!  Soon the Ambassador Cards shipment would come in.  That was a task!    Each different Christmas card type would have its pre-destined home in the rack, the kid's cards together, the cards for lovers and friends and neighbors, all decorated in reds and greens and vivid blues.  All the racks had to be cleaned and dusted before unpacking the boxes in the week before Thanksgiving.  It was also time to decorate the windows with tinsel and paper.   Dad would give me like 10 bucks and allow me to go "uptown" to purchase tinsel ropes, garland and holly to decorate the tree that we would have in the window.   We always had trouble with the sun pulling the color out of the boxes, so we had to be creative to showcase our items for sale.  We always used Fostoria for the windows and we would rotate the boxes of perfume and cameras in and out of the window to protect the boxes.   The camera department was Hern's domain.   He made all the camera decisions and had to keep all the film, batteries and flash bulbs well stocked for Christmas Eve shoppers.  Eventually Dad and our pharmacist, Burl Whitt, got involved in the camera purchases, especially for the more expensive Canon cameras.  Oh how I wish I had paid attention to all the great photography tips they shared around giant cups of coffee!  Everything you wanted and needed, could be had on Court Street, Prestonsburg Kentucky.    I imagine that some people have fond memories of shopping trips to bigger cities, but not me.

Doc Hutsinpillar retired during the mid 1960's and Cloyd Johnson became our Pharmacist.  I remember Cloyd had a large hump on his back.   Abe Smiley, one of the drug store regulars, would always come back to the pharmacy to visit with Cloyd.  Naturally he would ask how Cloyd got that hump on his back.   Every day Cloyd would tell him the story of being in the war.   He said he was talking too much and swallowed a cannon ball!  Abe would laugh and laugh and then come back the next day to hear the story one more time.  I also remember this story about Abe.   Abe would go to each table with one of the lawyers who hung out at the Korner during lunch.   The lawyer would have a nickel and a dime on his hand and he would ask Abe which one he wanted.   Abe would take the nickel and oh how everyone would laugh and laugh.   One day dad asked Abe why he didn't take the dime, surely he knew that a dime was worth more than the nickel.   Abe quickly said, "If I take the dime, he'll quit doing it!"   So Abe was making 20 or 30 cents a day, enough to buy him a Pepsi a day.   He was a smart cookie, he always said he wished he had Johnny's Cash and Charlie's Pride. 

The pharmacists during the 70's were John Burke Jr. and Burl Whitt and Della and I became pharmacy techs in the late 70's.  What a time we had, most days fluctuated between ball breaking pranks and crazy fast paced work - well fast paced for that time period.   Burl was what I would call an interesting character.   Smart as a whip, keenly curious about the newest invention - computers - Burl was a genius.   Photography was his passion, I wish I knew the things he had forgotten.  John Jr. was the other pharmacist and I had to watch were I walked because he was likely to be practicing karate kicks and jabs in that small space.