Fountain of Their Youth

High school fans used to kick up a little dust during football season, but for the most part it was pretty quiet growing up in Old Towne Orange over the last hundred years. The place to be was Watson’s Drug and Soda Fountain, where tales were told, gossip exchanged, cherry phosphates shared and prescriptions filled.

This little bit of Mayberry still exists. George Robinson has been watching from his regular perch on the patio outside Watson’s for nearly 30 years. Sure, prices have changed: Gum used to cost a nickel, and a stack of flapjacks cost a dollar. But life passes through this landmark neighborhood much as it did in days gone by.

“The town has changed very little over the years, and this spot has remained the center of activity,” said Robinson, a septuagenarian who still styles hair at Hair Looms in downtown Orange. “This is where everything happened. Most of the town decisions were discussed right here.”

Watson’s is celebrating its 100th year of business this week with a street party Saturday that will be attended by friends, families, regular customers and city officials. The event marks not only an anniversary but also a major milestone in the town’s history and the lives of many of its residents.

From its earliest years, Watson’s was a frequent pause from the daily round of a small town workday. Until 1905 it was the only drugstore in town. Because it was next door to the Orange Post Office, residents had to stop in to pick up their mail. (Home delivery didn’t begin until 1910.)

Another draw was the Van de Kamps bakery on the other side of the store, a frequent stop at a time when most people still got their bread from bakeries, according to Phil Brigandi, a local historian and author of “Orange: The City ‘Round the Plaza.”

The building itself went through many changes. On Aug. 28, 1899, Kellar Watson celebrated his 29th birthday by opening his pharmacy in the Orange Drug Store, which began in 1875 and was located in the Old Post Office building on South Glassell.

Civic-minded, Watson was active in the Odd Fellows Lodge, which began construction on one of the first modern buildings in downtown Orange: the brick two-story building that now houses Watson’s. Watson moved his store into the building the year after it was built.

Watson’s fancy new digs were a boon to business. The location at 118 E. Chapman (the easternmost half of Watson’s current location) was well-placed next to the hub of activity at the post office. In 1926, the post office moved to a new location and Alpha Beta took over that space and Watson’s storefront. Watson, in turn, moved down to the corner into a new space with marble floors and a modern soda fountain.

The man behind the business was more than proprietor. He was one of the Big Men in Town.

Watson Sr. was very active in the community, Brigandi said. “He was city treasurer, president of the chamber of commerce and active in the Odd Fellows Lodge.”

His son, Kellar Watson Jr., who is 92 and lives near Hart Park in Orange, was also briefly active in civic affairs, Brigandi said.

“He found himself too easy a target when serving as councilman. Everybody knew to head to the drugstore to lodge a complaint about town affairs. He resigned after a year.”

In 1949, the Alpha Beta market moved out, and Kellar Watson Jr. opened a new building in the larger space next door, completely remodeling the old building “with every modern feature and design,” according to Brigandi.

Then three days shy of its 50th birthday, the newly updated 28,000-square-foot store featured a swanky 20-stool soda fountain.

Layered through these chapters of bricks and buildings have been the mortar of town folks’ tales: sweethearts meeting at the fountain, high school groups celebrating Friday night’s game, the locals who began their day with coffee and breakfast.

Loyal customers continue to relive their early memories at Watson’s. Anita Ferguson has been coming to the store for breakfast with her Orange High School class of 1943 every Saturday for four years. Meryle Swanson has been coming to Watson’s regularly for nearly 30 years, beginning with his first visit after the high school prom.

Swanson and Robinson constitute a kaffeeklatsch group that has met at Watson’s for breakfast daily off and on for three decades.

“One of my girlfriends brought me here for a banana split some 30 years ago,” Robinson said. “It was the best banana split I ever had, and I’ve been coming off and on ever since.”

“Everybody came here,” said Bill Mayes, a lifelong resident and football star at Orange High School in the 1940s. “We either met here or over at Scotty’s Malt shop, across the street. There were other drugstores, but we always came here.”

Not far from Watson’s, small-town pranks drew consternation from the local police. Freshmen from Orange High would regularly get dunked in the Orange Plaza fountain as a rite of passage. Sometimes a skunk got planted in the police car. But since everyone knew everyone else, watchful eyes were nearly impossible to escape. Even if your parents didn’t catch you, your friends’ parents might.

“You couldn’t even sneeze on the way home from school without someone calling your mom to tell her you had a cold,” said Kay Watson Smith, daughter of Kellar Watson Jr. “I didn’t have much of a social life at the drugstore because my dad was always there.”

Like those of the rest of her family, Smith’s days were centered around the drugstore because she helped out most of her life, at the fountain, helping with the bookkeeping and taking inventory once a year.

The Watson family was always on the annual parade floats or on stage at the May festival. “Mother always told us to represent the family well,” said Smith, who graduated from Orange High in 1952. “I couldn’t wait to get away to college and be anonymous,” said Smith, who graduated from Stanford University in 1956.

Today, Watson’s current owner, Scott Parker, is as much Watson’s pharmacist as museum curator, maintaining the memorabilia accumulated over a century. A framed prescription for heroin hangs in the pharmacy area, a reminder of the days when the narcotic was acceptable for prescription use. Antique medicine bottles line the shelves, and thousands of old prescriptions--some for opium, heroin or brandy--are piled in the store’s basement.

Jumping ahead a few decades, the decor reflects its soda shop heyday of the 1950s, with Coke posters on the wall, malted milk ads, old license plates from around the nation and old-fashioned soda machines. The waitresses wear Capri pants and chiffon scarves. Oldies blast from the jukebox.

If visiting Watson’s is a trip back in time, running it is still a family affair. Scott hired Steve Parker to work in the store during the mid-1970s. Scott later adopted Steve, and now the two are the team that keep Watson’s going.

Operating on a shoestring budget, Scott Parker at first considered removing the old soda fountain when he bought the store in 1971. He decided he didn’t have the money.

“I’m glad I didn’t,” he said. “It would have been a huge mistake.”

“People like originality,” said Steve Parker, who has a marketing degree from Chapman. “And this is the real deal.”

Along with maintaining Watson’s traditions, the two are carrying on the Watson family legacy of community involvement. Scott recently was named Citizen of the Year for his involvement as past president of the Orange Chamber of Commerce and supporter of many Old Towne organizations. Steve continues to help his adoptive father with his marketing skills.

No story about Watson’s would be complete without mentioning one of its numerous “Hollywood moments.” In 1996, Old Towne Orange and Watson’s Drug were turned into a slice of small-town Erie, Pa., for Tom Hanks’ hit film “That Thing You Do.”

The owners say the next century will see few changes at the store. History and loyal customers have been the key ingredients for this longtime operation and the Parkers are not about to change Watson’s recipe for success.

“Pharmacy can be boring,” Parker said. “But in a store setting like this, the combination of the soda fountain, the lunch counter, the pharmacy and the community lends itself to great friendships.”