Growing up in a drug store

Richard Armour's Drug Store Days: My Youth Among the Pills and Potions (1959) may be one of the funniest memoirs you will ever read, even if it is far from the funniest of Armour's books.

Armour grew up the son and grandson of California druggists. He did not follow the family tradition and instead became a college professor and humorist, author of numerous textbook parodies such as It All Started with Columbus and light verse.

Most of the humor in Drug Store Days comes at his own family's expense. Both of his quirky grandmothers complicated family life. His dad's mother had been married to the drug store's original owner and continued to act as if the store were hers, coming in every day and staking out a position near the ladies' restroom and making announcements whenever it was occupied. "Besides, as long as he owed her anything she felt that the store was really hers and that she was entitled to drop in and criticize and help herself to peppermints," Armour writes.

As for his maternal grandmother, she lived with the family for several years and insisted upon a nip of alcohol at bedtime. When Prohibition came in, she refused to change her habit, and in fact refused to go to bed without her nightcap. Fortunately his father, being a druggist, had remedies in his store containing enough alcohol to give his mother-in-law a good night's sleep and himself a little peace in his home.

Another frequent subject of Armour's memories is his Uncle Lester, his father's unmarried brother, who seem favored by their mother, at least as long as he stayed unmarried. She did her best to discourage any woman who might take an interest in Lester.

Armor's father was a tightwad who squeezed maximum profit out of everything, while refusing to install a soda fountain in his drug store at a time when soda fountains were a major source of revenue for his competitors. He probably didn't like the thought of his son, and perhaps his mother, consuming most of the profits. As for his mother, she had a jealous streak, especially after her husband installed a couch in the basement of his store.

Richard Armour had a gift for finding the humor in just about anything, including Christopher Columbus, Karl Marx and his own grandmothers. Thank goodness he chose not to become a druggist.