Chapter 3: Bad Medicine

Another kind of patent medicine peddler back in those days was the "snake oil salesman," as he was called among other things. The year I was born, 1919, the Volstead Act was passed, making it illegal to buy alcohol as a beverage. And like all other reform movements started by well meaning meddlers who have no true concept of human nature, the Act created more problems than it solved.

Bootlegging and rum running became cottage industries. Whole boatloads of whiskey were smuggled into this country from Cuba, Mexico and Canada and elsewhere. Anything prohibited becomes in great demand just because it is prohibited, if for no other reason than it has become forbidden fruit. Great fortunes were made in moonshining.

The South gave birth to another predator who saw an opportunity to reap great benefits from Prohibition and quickly jumped in to profit. He was the seller of street corner nostrums and cure alls all loaded with alcohol and God knows what else. Vern Sharp was one of the worst offenders.

The first time I saw Vern Sharp he was hustling patent medicine on the street corner right across from Backus' Pharmacy. He stood there, all resplendent in his blue and green and tan windowpane checked suit, giving his spiel to all the passers by. He looked so much bigger than life to an impressionable young boy like myself. In fact he seemed to be almost heroic.

What he sold was "Doc Sharp's only known remedy to cure menstrual cramps, headaches and feelings of depression." It came in a clear glass bottle with a green label. There was a line drawing on the label of a pretty young woman sipping something from a tablespoon.

Because the "remedy" was nothing more than grain alcohol laced liberally with laudanum and cherry syrup, it would make the user happy as a clam. (Laudanum is an opium derivative.) Of course, after a few times of "medicating" one's self, the customer became addicted. But it wasn't Vern's worry, he would have moved on to other places and other suckers - or victims, according on your point of view. He knew he had a ready market if and when he came back through town again.

I thought Vern Sharp was the most romantic looking fellow alive. He was a big man, a very little over six feet tall, and his beer keg shaped body seemed all muscle. At some time in his life, Vern had done a lot of very hard work and it showed. His big booming voice and always friendly demeanor and twinkling eyes made it seem he was either laughing at you or with you. It was kind of hard to figure out which.

"Now I stand here today offering for mere pennies, a fraction of it's true worth, Doc Sharp's own secret remedy which cures so many of the ailments which plague modern man and woman. Whether it be the phase of the moon for the ladies or the awful morning after feeling you men sometimes have on Sunday mornings after a night out sharing a few libations with your friends," he paused dramatically and grinned for a beat, then continued, "I offer you Doc Sharp's own personal remedy with the unconditional guarantee it always leave you feeling much, much better than if you left those symptoms untreated.

"My own dear father discovered this great remedy and brought it back from the darkest interior of deepest Africa. I, his only son, now offer this amazing panacea to you for not five dollars as you would expect to pay, nor even three dollars or even two dollars, but for the paltry sum of one measly dollar, just a faded picture of our great first president, George Washington. And you sir, are you the next to sleep tonight in the arms of Morpheus? One small dose of Doc Sharp's elixir will help you break the craving of the Demon Rum, guaranteed. Here, Sir." And he'd offer the bottle to a passer-by on the sidewalk. A few gawkers stood and watched the show, some of them buying.

"Aren't you going to get any, Pa? The stuff sounds great. It cures everything. The man says so." I was so excited the first time I saw Vern Sharp. Then Pa poured cold water on my excitement.

"Davy, the man is a common scoundrel. What he sells is a cure worse than the ailment. He is selling the misery of opium to the weak and the unwary."

"Well, Pa, why don't the sheriff do something and arrest him if he's a crook?" I didn't exactly doubt my father, but I wasn't completely convinced he was correct. Young boys want to believe in the unbelievable. No matter whether it's in miracles or universal panaceas, youth wants to believe the unbelievable.

"Davy, the man lies to people. He misleads them. It is not a crime to do so, but it should be. Although come to think of it, if everybody who had ever told a lie was thrown in jail, everybody would be locked up and there wouldn't even be any jailers. They would have to be locked up too. So we do the next best thing and try to be honest and hope people will be honest with us in return. If they are not, then just have nothing to do with them. It doesn't take a man in business very long to learn the fact simple fact he can't lie to his customers and keep them coming back to him. So you see how it works?"

"No, Pa, I don't," I told him honestly.

He tousled my hair and laughed and said, "You will, boy, you will." Just then Ma came up and we all three went in and had us each a nickel ice cream cone. Now here was something I could understand and appreciate. Looking out the drug store window, I kept watching Vern Sharp standing on the corner across the street from us, hawking his wares.

Dan Houston, our local " town drunk" walked up to Vern, bought three bottles and scurried away. Others would stop, buy a bottle or two, self-consciously glance across the street at the drug store and go on about their affairs. Vern Sharp was doing a land office business. But then, whenever a person caters to the weaknesses of others, it seems business is always good, no matter what the product he is selling.

We finished our ice cream cones and headed home with the few purchases we made and I forgot all about Vern Sharp. After all, I was nine years old (almost.) and the world was so full of the new and the interesting. There were ever so many things to look at and see and experience. No sidewalk flimflam man seen yesterday could compare with the fascination of a strange bug or twin chicks hatched out of one egg, or the birth of a new baby calf. There was just so much to see and examine and experience at that age.

Then perhaps six months later, I saw Vern Sharp again. There he stood again on the same street corner, offering Doc Sharp's cure-all in the same sing-songy booming voice. It seemed the same people who bought from him were buying from him again. He did appear to have his loyal following.

I walked past him on the way to the movie house. I watched Ken Maynard shoot the bad guys and win the fair lady in the movie "Drum Taps" for about the fifth time. Ever since I "grew so big," almost nine, I was permitted to go to the Saturday afternoon movie matinee by myself and meet my folks at a predetermined place, usually the drug store or the feed store, sometimes over at the Bid a Wee Cafe.

I noticed how he (Vern Sharp) was somehow changed and different. His voice still boomed out and could be heard a block away and he was saying the same words as the last time I saw him, but his eyes were all glittery and his motions were now jerky. To me he looked scary rather than "heoic" as he once had. There seemed to be something mean and vicious in the set of his mouth and eyes. He had changed and not for the better.