The Drug Store: A Fisherman's Account

E.C. Buchanan grew up in a small Eastern North Carolina town. There his father, a pharmacist, bought a drug store soon after World War II. The drug store became a true family business in which all five members of the family worked. E.C. started working as a soda jerk in the drug store at the age of eight. His experience learning to operate the store and to serve its customers, black and white, formed lasting impressions that he carried into adult life. The drug store was a social gathering place, a nexus for news and first line health care stop for many different people. Mr. Buchanan tells the story through the eyes of a teenager mystified with race relations, politics, religion and, of course, women. He recounts this story in parallel with the development of his character's prime avocation, sport fishing, taught by a kindly, life-affirming mentor. If you want to relive an era of innocence, to see how a small business worked, to see how beliefs are formed, to find excitement and mystery in the natural and cultural world, this book is for you. Like many a struggling teenager, the book's narrator and principle character, C.C. McKinney, goes to college and finds a much bigger and more complicated world out there.