Successful Rx: Dispensing a Sense of Community : Druggist Harold Marcus and his wife run their Huntington Beach pharmacy in old-fashioned style.

I can’t decide which is more depressing: new strip malls designed without soul or vision from the get-go, primed for faceless dry cleaners and yogurt shops, or old ‘50s and ‘60s strip malls from which the hope has slowly been leeched by years of declining business.

When I was small, these then-new little centers abounded with as much life, mystery and stuff as a kid with 75 cents in his pocket could hope to explore. Like so many other things built in the rocket exhaust of the space age, the design of the centers seemed to lean optimistically into the future, and, being a California innovation, they had a casual, if parking-lot ugly, charm. Now, though, these centers don’t so much lean as they do teeter on the brink of oblivion.

There is such a center at Springdale Street and Edinger Avenue in Huntington Beach, and time has not been kind. The buildings that once were the center’s “anchors”--a Toy City and Bank of America--now sit vacant, leaving the small independent businesses remaining to fend for themselves against the super-stores and mega-malls.

In the midst of this center sits the Springdale Country Drugstore, which clearly hasn’t caught on yet that it’s supposed to be miserable.

Remember the Twilight Zone episode where a progress-plagued modern man gets off the train at a stop called Willoughby, and he is suddenly transported to an idyllic, innocent turn-of-the-century small town?

This drugstore is more than a little like that: Its shelves and counters are all warm wood antiques. Much of the rent-paying display space isn’t even taken up with items for sale, but with eye-tickling nostrums and remedies from another age, such as an ancient bottle labeled “Dr. J.H. McLean’s Volcanic Oil Liniment.”

Yet, even with its actual for-sale stock depleted by the Christmas and post-Christmas rush, there is still a miraculous clutter to the place, abounding with items from pricey hand-painted Limoges boxes to hand-dipped chocolate truffles. Everywhere you look, there is a beguiling attention to design and detail. And everyone there is so darned nice . The druggist knows most of his customers by name, and on this particular day--the last of the old year--some of them were coming by apparently just to wish him a happy new year and shake his hand. “You really feel like you’re home here. They put out such an effort,” says customer Patricia Bandy, who has been coming to the drugstore for years.

It is indeed the oldest drugstore in Huntington Beach, which only dates it back 32 years. It didn’t start looking really old until 11 years ago when it was bought by Harold Marcus and his wife, Karen. Marcus had been the store’s pharmacist for a dozen years then, and says he and his wife “thought we should make a statement. But instead of upgrading it to look more modern, we downgraded it to the antique look. I think in our hearts we’d like to go back to the old concept of a country store and be the center of the community.”

Marcus prefers the term druggist over pharmacist. “There’s no distinction between them, except in my mind. I’ve got the doctorate in pharmacy, but when people ask I say I’m a druggist, because it’s old-fashioned,” he says. At 50, he looks a bit like a settled-down version of Peter Gabriel, and speaks like he lives in a Frank Capra movie, where business people are driven by a vision instead of the bottom line.

Growing up in East Los Angeles, Marcus’ first high school job in the 1950s was at a neighborhood drugstore. It was his goal to be a teacher. “But my employer encouraged me to enter an essay contest on why I wanted to become a pharmacist. I did it more or less to please him, but I won the contest. That gave me a scholarship for my first year at USC and determined where my education was going.

“I’ve never regretted it. This has become a very difficult business, but as long as it deals with people and the community, I feel real good about it and I’ll stick with it.”

Marcus and his wife--they were junior high sweethearts and have been married for 27 years--started the redesign with 1800s English apothecary fixtures they purchased at auction. Every year since, they’ve made changes in the decor and merchandise to keep it interesting.

When they travel, it’s not unusual for them to hit 30 or 40 antique shops in a day. Each January the Marcuses go to a huge gift show in Atlanta to scare up the “niche market” and cottage industry items in which they specialize. In the past couple of years, they’ve begun carrying country-style clothing and diabetic candies.

Marcus said, “Most of the typical things people now find in markets, we’ve done away with. We are catering to stepping back in time, like maybe it was 50 to 100 years ago. I know we could sell more merchandise if we had it there in place of all this, but my wife keeps us on track, setting the ambience. Instead of having motor oil or canned peanuts stacked in 12 deep, we’d rather create an atmosphere. We try to present a traditional feeling to the community. We even screen our greeting cards to make sure there’s no off-color ones.”

They would love to expand the store to include a soda fountain and other items they’ve had in storage for two years, but might have to find a new location to have room for it all.

They also would prefer to have an older building to match the contents, but aren’t willing to look very far afield. “This community has been so good to us that we don’t want to stray out of it,” Marcus said.

For a person who lives in Southern California, he certainly uses the term community a lot.

“We’re serious about wanting to be a center to the community. We’re committed to the community; it isn’t that we’re just here to make a buck. We’re active in the high school across the street (a call to Marina High School’s Carolyn Shirley did indeed yield a gushing list of the Marcuses’ good works) and have hired some 200 of their students over the years. Local churches come to us for support. We’re well known in the community.

“It’s a difficult time economically, and it’s a challenge to not change our concept of business, that of giving back to the community what they give you. But I believe we have returned to us what we give.”

Though hardly common coin in today’s business world, Marcus feels treating people well has to be good for business. Moreover, he says, “This is the way it’s supposed to be. My wife and I were on a buying trip once in an Amish community in Indiana. I was buying some antiques in a hardware store, and this Amish lady helped me to package the things, and I was so impressed with her willingness to help. I told her how taken I was by that, and she just said, ‘Well that’s what we’re here on Earth for.’ That’s stuck in my mind for the last 10 years, that what we’re here for is to help others.”

There’s no trouble finding help in the store. Along with Marcus children who have worked in the store--their eldest, Trent, is manager--they have some 28 full- or part-time employees. One, Linda Taylor, started as a customer when she found she could get her prescription for $10 less there than at a chain store.

“Harold started teasing me that I’d have to get a job because I could never leave the store without buying something else up front. It was kind of a joke between us, and then one day I asked if they needed help and they did. I’ve worked for them for three years now, and they’re as nice to their employees as they are to their customers and to each other,” Taylor said.

That attitude has netted the store a loyal customer base, which continues shopping there even with few other attractions to bring them to the area. There even are customers who have moved out of the state who will stop in to visit and buy a few items when they are in town.

Marcus is not certain that will be enough to carry the store through what he perceives to be a difficult time ahead for the small pharmacy business.

Many insurance companies and health-maintenance organizations, presumably to cut down on paperwork, require their customers to fill their prescriptions at large chain stores, even when independents are willing to match the price. Marcus was appalled to find that the federal laws against such restraint of trade don’t apply to health insurers and was more appalled when the local school district he’s supported for years recently signed a contract with an insurer that excludes businesses such as his.

He called the district, he said, and asked them, “Are you aware that you’ve excluded a business that just yesterday put on a breakfast for all your volunteer help?” He was able to persuade them to include him. “That takes care of me,” he said, “but what about the other people who serve the community?”

While he sees a very tough time ahead for independents, Marcus says he also has sympathy for those working at the chain drugstores, saying he knows of one large pharmacy where on a recent day three employees filled 700 prescriptions. “They’re under the gun all the time and don’t have any time to talk to the people or know them,” he lamented.

In his business he knows the name of nearly all of his customers, and more.

“In knowing about their health issues, you know about their children, their hobbies, you know them . And I’m not just here to give medicine; I’m here as a person,” he said. Marcus says he considers a personal involvement to be important, “because fear is a tough thing to give a pill for, and a pill doesn’t replace understanding. A caring opinion can go a long way. Oft times it’s ministering to the care-giver: If someone has died, you give comfort. A doctor can prescribe a sleeping pill or nerve pill, but that doesn’t deal with the grief.

“When someone comes in after finding they have cancer and need to talk to someone about it, we have an old church pew here and sometimes I’ll pray with them. It goes beyond the medicine in the bottle. My wife bought me a sign that hangs over the pharmacist’s that says ‘Faithful Dispensing,’ and I’d like it to be perceived that way.”

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