A poster in the window of the Post Office Pharmacy informs customers last week that the pharmacy has closed. (Enterprise photo — Griffin Kelly)

When I answered the phone, it was Kookie on the other end.

“Whatta ya know about the Post Office Pharmacy closing?” she said.

“What?” I said. “The Post Office Pharmacy’s not closing.”

“It’s not?”

“No,” I said. “At least I don’t think so. I was in there a few days ago, and no one said anything about it.”

“Well, they’re sure saying it now,” she said.

“Who’s saying it?” I asked.

“I heard it from a couple of people,” she said. “Plus, someone posted something about it on Facebook.”

I was less than convinced.

Let’s face it: Just because a bunch of folks agree on the same thing, it’s no proof it’s true. But I aimed to find out, post haste.

Fact checking in The World at Large is usually a long and tedious process. Not so in My Home Town. After getting in touch with a couple of solid sources, I found out the Post Office Pharmacy had indeed closed.

To me, the news was gut-wrenching. Being a chronic and accomplished worrier, my first thought was it had closed because Jim Bevilacqua had a serious illness. While no one knew the exact story, Jim’s health didn’t seem to have caused the closing. The gut-wrenching stopped. But I didn’t feel all that good, either. In fact, I felt downright sad.

“Sad? Sad about what?” people might say. “I mean, it was just a pharmacy.”

Well, of course it was a pharmacy, but to me it was never JUST one.

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The calculus of loss

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According to the Psych Cartel, any loss reminds us of all our other losses. So it follows that the loss of the Post Office Pharmacy reminded me of my other losses — my sense of loss over the Post Office Pharmacy was multiplied. And while I find myself at odds with a bunch of the Psych Cartel’s dicta, I’m in perfect agreement with this one.

But of course there’s more.

For one thing, I was a second-generation customer. My parents began their patronage even before Carl Bevilacqua bought it, and they stayed lifelong customers. Obviously, I continued the tradition till it couldn’t be continued.

Among my earliest memories are going in the Post Office Pharmacy with my mother. I don’t know my exact age, but certainly it was before I was in kindergarten. And what I most vividly remember was the exotic smells from the cosmetics counter.

What people may not know is until the mid-to-late ’60s, high-end perfumes, soaps, cosmetics and grooming aids were sold almost exclusively in drug stores. Eventually, all those goods left the Post Office Pharmacy’s shelves, but somehow, almost mystically, their aromas still greeted me when I walked in. For years I thought those scents had seeped into the building itself, but later I decided it was all in my head, literally — some kind of sight-sound-smell connection imprinted in my brain since childhood. Either way, it was a great way to be greeted.

Of course my greeting there was not restricted to the olfactory and mnemonic. Whoever was behind the counter was friendly and welcoming. The star of that show was Mrs. Bevilacqua, who always had a big smile on her face and always called me (and I’m sure every other customer) by name. And so did all the employees, foremost among whom I remember Ann Marie Peer. I’ve no idea who knows the most people in Saranac Lake, but I do know the Post Office Pharmacy crew are in the running for first place.

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Visiting

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Then of course there was Carl Bevilacqua. He always was at his place in the prescription section, there at the town hall side of the store. For decades, we always said hello but nothing more, and as a result I thought of him as a quiet, even shy person. Then about 20 years ago, on a complete whim I decided to write a feature on the Post Office Pharmacy — specifically, what it was like being a pharmacist in a TB town before antibiotics. I didn’t know if Mr. B. would go for it (since I didn’t know him at all), but when I asked him, he was perfectly agreeable.

I interviewed him about 10 times and got a ton of fascinating material — so much that when I wrote the final piece, there was almost nothing in it about TB, per se. But I got a lot more, namely a bond with Mr. B. So I asked him if he wanted to go for a drink sometime, and we did, and it was a hoot. Far from being shy, or even quiet, when not at work Mr. B. was a delight to visit with. He was sharp as a tack and had a great memory and sense of humor. Our chats are still the high points of any times I spent in the Boathouse.

For the past 10 years or so, I found myself going in there not only for prescriptions but for other stuff: toothbrushes, antacids, candy (which, if it was a present, they always gift-wrapped) and ultimately just to shoot the breeze. Of course, Jim was my go-to guy for advice on meds, but beyond that, he was fun to rap with about The Good Old Days, and he always had time to do it. Or maybe more exactly, he always MADE time to do it. Mary, Nancy and Lee were also good sports with fabulous senses of humor — that is, they laughed at my jokes … for the most part.

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Oh, them changes …

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I know the Post Office Pharmacy’s end was inevitable. If it hadn’t closed this year, or next year, then it would’ve closed sometime down the line. Change may happen at a fast pace or a slower one, but it WILL happen. I understood this perfectly when I was 20, upon reading the works of an ancient Greek philosopher. According to Heraclitus, the only constant in life is change. His most famous example was you can’t step twice in the same stream, because the current changes everything — even if only microscopically. It’s a simple concept to grasp, but often a difficult reality to accept.

So while I understand we live in a world of change — have always lived in a world of change, and the Post Office Pharmacy is simply one more part of it — I still feel sad about it.

And I’d bet if Good Old Heraclitus had lived his entire life in Saranac Lake, he’d feel sad about it, too.