Main Street Mainstays
The following artice was originally published in The Nantucket Independent, December 15, 2004.
It would be hard, if not impossible, to imagine a CVS directly beside a Rite Aid or a Duane

Reade. It would be harder still

- if not, somehow, more impossible - to imagine that those businesses could survive for decades without hostility or animosity. An amicable arrangement of such kind would stand to undermine convention, or at least it would anywhere else but Nantucket.

Without CVS, Rite Aid or Duane Reade, Nantucket is home to adjacent pharmacies at 45 and 47 Main St., which display a historical symbiosis that both enchants and perplexes. The attrition of Mom-and-Pops by massmarket conglomerates has evidently skipped over the Grey Lady, where corporate turf wars between these neighbors appear the most unlikely of scenarios.

And while the traditional soda jerk has been replaced and pharmacists no longer prescribe devil's dung to treat bronchitis, the allure of Congdon's Pharmacy and Nantucket Pharmacy, the side-by-side Main Street mainstays for more than 60 years, has yet to fall out of vogue.

NEW CHAPTERS IN OLD STORY

The story of the twin buildings extends back for more than a century. Congdon's opened its doors for the first time in 1860, 11 years after Orisin Adams gained sole ownership of the first-floor grocery market at 45 Main in what was then known as "Allen's Block" extending from 41 to 45 Main St.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent file Congdon's Pharmacy, left, which opened its doors in 1860, has been operating side by side with Nantucket Pharmacy, right, for more than 60 years.

The continuity of Congdon's contrasts markedly with the relatively nascent introduction of Nantucket Pharmacy to Main Street in 1936, although the business was then called Mac's Pharmacy, after its owner David McMillan.

It was in 1977 that both current proprietors took hold of the pharmacies, with Allan Bell assuming control of Nantucket Pharmacy from Wally Knott and John Bertolami buying Congdon's from Walter Fairbanks and Harry Rex, Jr. Bertolami, who visits the island once per week and otherwise oversees the pharmacy from the Boston area, took a 15-year break from Congdon's. During his absence, Jacqueline Tullo ran the operation in the 1980s.

Congdon's Pharmacy, circa 1900 COURTESY OF NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

And while the pharmacies are separated by 76 years, 16 American presidents and the addition of 15 states to the union, their recent histories are no less noteworthy than the decades that preceded them.

In an environment where some regulars become lifers and never "cross the line" into the other pharmacy, Joanne Skokan's story appears all the more remarkable.

Skokan and her husband Dave ran David's Soda Fountain at Congdon's for 13 years from 1987 to 2000 before they passed the lunch counter responsibilities to Beth Gregoire. Within a year of leaving Congdon's, however, Skokan was back on Main Street, but this time at 45 not 47.

In search of a new challenge, Skokan crossed the line in ways that lifers never could: she became a clerk at Nantucket Pharmacy. "I like being on Main Street," she said. "I'm a town ie. I love working here."

In the three years since her relocation, Skokan's attachment to Nantucket Pharmacy led her to compile a book on the history of the structure and the businesses that inhabited it before 1936. Complete with deeds, town records and advertisements from bygone days, the book was presented to owner Allan Bell - whom Skokan referred to as "The Boss" - as a Christmas gift in 2003.

In the wake of the Skokans' departure, Congdon's first turned to Gregoire to cater to the breakfast and lunch crowd. After a short spell of just two years, Gregoire left and was replaced by Tiina Polvere and her husband Donald, Jr., who are the current proprietors of "Counter at Congdon's."

A new entry into the lunch counter business, Polvere - her credentials include a degree from the Culinary Institute of America (New York) and certificates of study from institutions in America and Europe and over 20 years of cooking on Nantucket - has been more than up to the challenge of maintaining the continuity of the counter.

Like Peter VanDingstee and his seven-year run as lunch counter boss next door at Nantucket Pharmacy, Polvere has been encouraged by the steady stream of regulars and guests to the counter.

"The summer was very good [for business]," said Polvere, whose "Counter at Congdon's" will celebrate its one-year anniversary on Jan. 6. "We've been on a steady incline since we took over."

Polvere, who owns and operates Nantucket Cake Company in addition to her Congdon's duties, has overseen a renovation of the pharmacy's basement, including the installation of air conditioning, an expanded lighting system and a soon-to-arrive, stateof the-art ice cream freezer.

"People think that we don't cook the food here," Polvere said, as she directed an impromptu tour of the tiny kitchen, "but we really do."

Major players aside, the behind-the-scenes contri- butions of less familiar faces drive the two pharmacies. Nick Cardelli, who can be found seasonally in the basement kitchen of Congdon's, has survived three lunch counter regime changes and 13 years of service all before his 24th birthday.

"I grew up working here," he said nonchalantly when asked about his staying power.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS Bucking the war of attrition typically played by competitors, Congdon's Pharmacy and Nantucket Pharmacy have established a mutually supportive alliance that, no longer turning the heads of locals, has become standard issue for those with deeper ties to 45 and 47 Main St.

"We're fully cooperative," said Bell, now in his 27th year at the helm of Nantucket Pharmacy. "It's at a point where it's no longer competition. They have their clientele and we have ours."

Lynne Walton, a native Nantucketer who remembers the days when there were tables and chairs at the soda fountain and has worked for two decades at Congdon's Pharmacy, expressed similar sentiments on the often curious co-habitation.

"There's just that good feeling between everybody," she said. "Where it started out to be a contest, now it's about working together."

At its simplest level, the cooperation between the pharmacies has to do with just that, the day-to-day operations of the pharmacy counters and the need to have sufficient inventory to meet customer needs.

"We help each other out with prescription stock," said Bell, who had previously worked in a "very busy pharmacy in New Jersey" before coming to Nantucket enthused by the prospect of running his own shop. "It takes two full days to get an order to the island. It's always been like that since I've been here."

What began with trading prescription stock, however, has evolved with the times and the introduction of more advanced ways of keeping track of their respective businesses. Indeed, the computer age has ushered in an expanded reciprocity between the two island institutions.

"We call back and forth as necessary," said Walton of the sharing of technical support. She added that the pharmacies use the same computer systems and that troubleshooting advice has become yet another in-kind trade between Congdon's and Nantucket pharmacies.

Pleased with the friendly rapport between the two businesses, Walton noted the efficacy of the interpharmacy dealings, a relationship that has developed over the years: "What we now have is something that works very well together."

Theirs is an arrangement that, Walton admits, may seem peculiar to out-of-towners. She recalled the high frequency of summer visitors being dumbfounded by the configuration. "I'll be outside on the bench having a break and [off-islanders] will just stare at the two pharmacies side-by-side," she said. "It's like they can't believe it."

With Bell relating his own anecdotes identical to Walton's observations, it is clear that the confusion caused by the adjacent pharmacies is as much a shared commodity as any prescription stock or computer assistance.

"We'll have so many times during the summer when visitors think we're one store," he said. "They can't accept the concept that there are two pharmacies side-by-side. It happens at least twice per day in the summer that someone comes into our store after being next door and thinks they're in the same place."

CHANGING TIMES, CHANGING ISLAND

Amidst the rise of massive chain pharmacies, the nostalgia runs deep at Congdon's and Nantucket pharmacies in a mien that extends past the soda fountains and tin ceilings, and to an era of true customer appreciation.

"Independent pharmacies are truly a dying breed," said Barry Rector, a staff pharmacist at Nantucket Pharmacy for 14 years. "Here, the customer is treated like a person instead of a 'unit' like at chains … We're up close and personal and a lot more patient-oriented than chains."

Workers at both pharmacies would agree that this special attention has enabled the seemingly outmoded relics to thrive in the 21st century, despite the many changes and challenges brought to the island in recent years.

"Here you get to meet the people, you get to know the people," said Walton. "Here you can have friendships and fellowships with your customers…[but] Nantucket is not the same as it once was."

Despite the differences in island living, Walton has seen a steadiness inside Congdon's. "Back in the old days you had your regular people," she said. "Now we have the pharmacists still spending more time than counting out pills. And with the lunch counter - you'll always have your regulars."

These differences from the rose-colored vision of Nantucket to the present of skyrocketing costs of living and, as Bell noted, the difficulties in dealing with insurance companies have affected all areas of island life and infiltrated even those institutions, like the Main Street pharmacies, that appear otherwise immune to the changes in times.

And still, the clerks, counter staff, cooks and pharmacists at Congdon's Pharmacy and Nantucket Pharmacy remain, in part, purveyors of history and peddlers of yesteryear.

"It's funny how time just moves along," said Rector. "You walk in here and you feel like you're

going into a piece of history." I