Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 167

folT FREE PRESSSUNDAY, APRIL 17, 1994 Dr. Pepper's drugstore keeps his secrets Savings is the Bottom Line! 0 IP nnnnrarpnTPnra i iii 1 Brother Plain Paper By Bob dart Cox News Service RURAL RETREAT, Va. Dr. Pepper's original drugstore closed Friday in this nook of Appalachia, but that won't end the century-old mystery surrounding the soft drink that bears his name. "There's still a lot of controversy over that around here," declares Jim Lloyd, a barber, bluegrass musician and unofficial town historian.

"You hear a lot of stories in a barber shop. There are at least four or five about Dr. Pepper." What is beyond dispute is that the Rural Retreat Drug Store was founded shortly after the Civil War by Dr. Charles T. Pepper and that the venerable pharmacy was scheduled to cease operations last week.

"We're just not making money," said Baynard Barton, the current druggist. Too many townsfolk got their prescriptions filled at a Wal-Mart located about 10 miles away, he said, explaining that national chains can buy in volume and undersell independent drugstores. It's a sad, familiar saga on smalltown Main Streets across America. The difference this time was that the demise involves the emporium of Dr. But it's not the story told by Milly Walker, curator of collections at the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute in Waco.

In the late 1800s, Morrison did move from Rural Retreat to Texas, stopping in Austin before buying the Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, she says. He did not bring along Dr. Pepper's daughter, but did hire Charles Alderton. It was Alderton who delighted in inventing soda fountain drinks. Morrison officially named this drink "Dr Pepper," apparently after his former boss.

He formed a partnership with Robert Lazenby, proprietor of Circle Ginger Ale in Waco, to bottle the new beverage. This account is supported by the Dr PepperSeven-Up Companies Inc. of Dallas, current manufacturers of the soft drink. However, the fellows at Lloyd's Barber Shop in Rural Retreat offer several other possibilities. One is that Dr.

Pepper's son, Louis, ran away to join a circus and picked up the recipe during his travels under the big top, said Lloyd. Another is that Morrison invented it in Rural Retreat to impress his would-be father-in-law, but took the drink to Texas when Dr. Pepper wouldn't let Morrison marry his daughter Pepper, although his descendants had long since sold the drugstore. It is an event that sent reporters and TV crews scurrying to this faded village of 964 residents and made Shirley Hawthorne, the drugstore's bookkeeper, a celebrity of sorts as she conversed on the phone with disc jockeys around the country. "I'm out want to find me a job?" she cheerfully concluded after bidding farewell to Charlie Tuna, who called from a radio station in California.

Hawthorne dispensed the locally prevalent version of the soft drink's genesis: Dr. Pepper, the druggist, was an "artist" who delighted in creating soda fountain drinks out of herbs, roots, fruit juices, secret flavorings and carbonated water. He hired a young assistant named Wade Morrison who ran away to Texas with both Dr. Pepper's daughter and his soft drink recipes in the late 1870s. Morrison opened a drugstore in Waco.

There, dhe of the soft drinks proved so successful that Morrison and his partner, Charles Alderton, decided to bottle it. At the insistence of the daughter, the drink was named "Dr Pepper" after its creator. "That's our story and we're not changing it," says Hawthorne. Fax Machine Automatic 30-page document feeder 48 digit LCD display 200 sheet paper cassette 0204-9508 List Price $949.95 brother MMMMMB WW OfficeMax Everyday Low Price To i Three Line Intercem-Spealcerphene 3 separate telephone lines Page and intercom WW a iaaj mm mm -dr -m mm km 3-party conferencing al nrclffltei an nattawrtl a. Model 843 0fl cn7MTfl Ml III 0205-0210 List Price $199.99 ii OfficeMax Everyday Low Price $smx; PHEE KIEJO" ED)AY DEL1VEHY! TO YOUR OFFICI OR HOMi WITH PURCHASES OP (SO OR MORI WITHIN OUR DltlVERY AREA.

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