George Grider
George Grider, 76, a native of Albany, Ky., came to Danville in 1940. He
owned Grider Pharmacy from 1956 to 1980, when he sold it to Bob Reister. Grider is married
to Nell Oates Grider.
Grider remembers his first night in Danville.
The Gilcher Hotel was where we spent our first night when we moved to
Danville. The Gilcher was what we called a ``fine hotel'' for a community this size in
1940.
Grider was also impressed by some of the city officials here at that
time.
Mr. Henry Nichols was mayor of Danville and a wonderful person. He was
uptown every day, talking to people on the street. Quite a politician. He knew a lot of
the history of Danville, and could tell you what Danville was doing, or what it wasn't
doing, and what it should have done. The Nichols family owned the Danville laundry.
Another official, Mr. Henry Jackson, was the city attorney; he was a very fine gentlemen,
and steered our council and mayor in the right direction. Henry Jackson didn't make any
mistakes.
Grider went to work for O.R. Ware at Ware's Drugstore, which was
located where Colwell Banker-VIP Realty is now, in 1940.
I worked for Mr. Ware from 1940 to September 1956, when I opened Grider
Pharmacy, Inc., on West Main Street. At that time, the Milady Dress shop was there. They
moved to Louisville.
We had a soda fountain with booths, tables and chairs, and stools at the counter. We had a
large mirror in the back of it. Being a new fountain in town, everybody came to try it the
first week. And I remember that we ran specials at the soda fountain. We sold banana
splits for 29 cents, ice cream sodas for 19 cents, and milkshakes for 19 cents.
The prices were good. We sold so many banana splits, they ran out of bananas at the
groceries in Danville, so we had to cut the banana splits out for a couple of days 'til we
got more bananas.
In the 1970s, Grider took the fountain out but left a couple of
tables, a coffee pot and drink machine. A sort of Danville institution was founded at
those tables, and he explains how the club got its name.
Grider Pharmacy got to be quite a place for some of the men in town, who
would come downtown and stop in for a cup of coffee in the middle of the morning and the
middle of the afternoon. And one of the people who visited us every afternoon for coffee
was Dr. E. Wilbur Cook, who was a retired professor at Centre College.
Pauline Huffman worked for us then. Dr. Cook would have a cup of coffee and a package of
Nabs, kind of a mid-afternoon snack. He had a habit of leaving the cellophane the Nabs
were wrapped in and messed up the table a little. Pauline would ask Dr. Cook, ``Why do you
want to make such a mess, you old goat, you?'' Pauline named the group the Old Goats'
Club. Dr. Wilbur was the oldest goat and first president of the Old Goats' Club.
Every morning and every afternoon, they have coffee and talk about the problems of the
day, but they never solved one. I remember Will Hunt was on the heart fund canvass one
year, and he said he'd collect from the Old Goats. Well, Will didn't even get a penny.
They said, ``We come down here to solve the problems of the world, not to give money
away.''
The club likes visitors and welcomes new members.
(B7)
