Friday, March 20, 2009

Mystery pharmacy signage from the DelMarVa peninsula


There's a pretty strip of land along the mid-Atlantic coast called the DelMarVa peninsula because three states, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, each own a chunk of it. When you get to the southern-most tip of it, you're at the outstanding engineering marvel that is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which is actually a bridge and a tunnel. On a pleasant drive in that area back in 2005, we stopped at a drug store that had an amusing logo. It's a guy's face, a friendly bespeckled guy, the kind of guy you'd want filling your prescription of Zocor or recommending a good over-the-counter foot powder. I didn't label the photo so I'm not sure if the pharmacy was in Del, Mar or Va, or what the name of the place is, but I believe it was a small chain. Anybody out there know? By the way, if you like kooky roadside signage, Debra Jane Seltzer has a mind-boggling collection of well-annotated photos at her flickr site. I'm a huge fan and you could and should easily spend hours there:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/agilitynut/sets/
She's also in the middle of one of her road trips and you can follow along on her fun blog:
http://roadsidenut.wordpress.com/
Go Debra go!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a sign from a drugstore chain, called Happy Harry's, sold a few years ago to Walgreens but all the stores retained the name.
Sadly Happy Harry has been dead for many years.

Doug Just Doug said...

To add, the face is the chain's logo and is that of Harry Levine, founder of Happy Harry's, which was a Delaware institution. It was the first pharmacy in the state to sell prescription drugs at a discount, which challenged the law in Delaware, which eventually changed in response. Most of us hate Walgreens taking over and still call the stores Happy Harry's.