Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
Regardless of what you do for a living, you’re probably not having as much fun as the gals behind the lunch counter at Jennifer’s Pharmacy in Clayton. Isabel Biesterfeld and Maryruth O’Hagan are the ringleaders of a crew who always seem to be laughing, making customers laugh, and enjoying themselves far too much to collect a paycheck.
Isabel: We have regulars that come in all the time, businessmen and women. We have “Thing 1” and “Thing 2,” who work at the Government Center, and then we have “Hearty Soup Man.”
Maryruth: And “Rhubarb Man,” who orders rhubarb pie. We call them these nicknames because we don’t remember their names. The most predominant nickname is “Good-Lookin’.”
Isabel: I really like to cook, so I like to make the cupcakes and the icing a lot. I really love making the meatloaf melts, and it’s fun making the shakes. And we usually talk people into getting what we want to make.
Maryruth: Isabel and I don’t remember any of the orders, and we just tell the customers that we’ll fix them something nice for them.
Isabel: We have some strange orders. This morning, we served a little girl a peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich. I have made a watermelon-hazelnut phosphate.
Maryruth: They never get what they really want, anyway.
Isabel: Maryruth and I are outgoing people, and we can tell the people who are willing to play around with us, and we can give them all kinds of s—t.
Maryruth: I think we can get away with it because we are two old ladies, and people don’t talk back to us because they don’t want to hurt our feelings.
Maryruth: Anything we put a banana in, we call a “flying monkey”—a shake, a phosphate, or a sundae. The kids love ‘em. So we have this flying monkey stuffed animal, and when someone orders something with a banana in it, we flicker the lights, find out their name, and yell, “Everybody, whatever-your-name-is just ordered a flying monkey shake; the monkey’s gonna fly for whatever-your-name-is,” and then we fling it from a slingshot. I like to scream at everybody and get them hyped up.
Isabel: I love the flying monkey procedure. I like to yell and scream and make a big production out of everything. After the 27th time doing it in one day, Maryruth doesn’t find it quite so humorous.
Isabel: Jennifer came up with the idea of putting a slice of pie right into the blender, for our pie milkshake. The blueberry and blackberry pie make a great color, that’s the color of my bedroom walls.
Maryruth: Those are delicious.
Maryruth: Older people like to show their grandchildren how they used to have soda fountains. There’s a generation that hasn’t seen this, and you can’t order a chocolate ice cream soda just anywhere anymore.
Isabel: Maryruth and I taught at the same preschool for 17 years. We like kids, but we’re happy not to be teaching them anymore. Sometimes girls come in who he had when they were 4 years old, and now they’re adults, with breasts and everything. They’re not asking us questions all day now. But we can tell them not to whine, and no running, and say “please,” like we used to.
Maryruth: The secret of working here is not taking it too seriously. But we would like a big tip, too.
