MOREHEAD, Ky. (LEX 18) — In an age of automation, shortcuts, and penny-pinching, some remedies are best found in the slow lane.
On Morehead's Main Street, you'll find Holbrook Drug, a place where time slows down and human connection will have you feeling 100% in no time.
Holbrook Drug opened its doors in 1950. If the walls could talk, they'd tell you not much has changed – pharmacists behind the counter, orangeade freshly squeezed at the soda fountain, and gifts for every occasion.
"You're seeing a lot of what it was with some updates around of course," said Jennifer Anderson, the pharmacy's owner and head pharmacist.
Anderson is one of those updates. She's only the third person to be at the helm of this hometown establishment, and she's loved Holbrook Drug her whole life.
"My father was a physician down the road, so after school I'd go to his office and come down here and go to the soda fountain, and we always got prescriptions and gifts from here. Definitely history here," Anderson said.
The shelves still hold medicine bottles and scales from original owner Bob Holbrook. A doctor's bag on display is actually that of Anderson's grandfather.
"That was my grandfather's and he would take that when he went on a horse and buggy out to do house calls," Anderson said.
You won't see horse-drawn doctors trotting down Main Street anymore, but in true Holbrook fashion, staff deliver to patients who can't make the trip.
For Anderson, it's important because sometimes the best medicine is a friendly face.
"Just keeping a personal touch in healthcare is something you don't find, and I think that's what makes a difference in everyone's lives…you're not a number, you're a person and you have a family. So I try to keep that idea of old school healthcare in this new environment," Anderson said.
It's the reason Gene Norden walked through the doors 55 years ago and keeps coming back.
"It's a real homey environment, and you walk in the back door and they say 'Hey Gene!'" Norden said.
Today, places where "everybody knows your name" are vanishing. Independent pharmacies like Holbrook swim upstream against big-box drugstores. But what chain pharmacies save in minutes and cents, they may lose in character and care.
"We've started getting a younger generation that want personal touches that don't want to be a number or stand in line…they want us to say their name when they walk in," Anderson said.
At Holbrook, the prescription for a long happy life is simple – one dose of humanity and a shake to help it go down.
