Places like Triplett-Day are ‘fading away,’ loyal customers say. What’s next for Jim Day?
For the first time in more than a century, a member of the Day family will no longer be dispensing pharmaceuticals and entertaining customers in downtown Gulfport.
But pharmacist Jim Day, who turns 90 on March 14, has no intention of retiring when Triplett-Day Drug Co. closes at month’s end. Instead, he’ll be working part-time at the family’s Orange Grove location, T-D Pharmacy, just seven miles up U.S. 49.
Day and partner Billy Triplett opened what would become a Gulfport institution in July 1955. The look of the store is pretty much frozen in time and one of its main attractions, along with the Day family and the home-cooked meals served up in its cafe with a lunch counter and soda fountain.
Before he opened his own business, Day worked for his uncle, Sam Kenner Day, across the street at Day Drug Co., founded in 1913. In fact, Day went to work scooping ice cream when he was 12 years old at his father’s pharmacy in Inverness in the Mississippi Delta, also Day Drug Co.
He never even thought about whether he should become a pharmacist. He just went to pharmacy school, the only one of five siblings to do so.
His son, Dan Day, was the only one of his own four children who became a pharmacist. Dan Day’s tragic death in June 2018 played into the family’s decision to close Triplett-Day.
It has been hard to keep up without him. Dan Day owned T-D Pharmacy and Woolmarket Pharmacy, but also helped out at Triplett-Day. The family has sold Woolmarket Pharmacy.
Jim Day started work at 12
Work is all Jim Day has ever known.
He moved to the Coast to work for his uncle because Inverness was a small community with limited opportunities.
He loves the Coast and the Coast loves him, especially the customers who have been with him all these years. He has four scrapbooks filled with photos and memories, although, as he looks through them, he notes that some of the faces belong to customers and co-workers now deceased.
When asked about closing the business, he says, “I guess when you’re 90 years old, it’s time to do something.”
Day doesn’t say much, but he watches and hears everything that goes on in Triplett-Day. If a regular comes in after a short absence, Day wants to know where that person has been and why he or she failed to mention they would be out of pocket.
He used to work seven days a week, coming in as early as 5:30 a.m. and leaving somewhere between 9:30-10 p.m.
He and the barber next door started breakfast before the kitchen crew arrived. Day cooked the grits while Al Graham from Triangle Barbershop fried the bacon. The first coffee club arrived at 8 a.m., followed by another at 10:30 a.m.
“It’s just a nice place to come and chew the fat,” said Harry Bell, a retired business owner who belongs to the second coffee group.
Coffee klatch member Tom Simmons said, “We’re not looking forward to being orphans.”
There’s no place like Triplett-Day
Newer customers hate to hear Triplett-Day is closing, too.
Charlie Molesworth is from Long Beach but had never been in the drugstore until six or seven months ago, after he started working downtown. On the hunt for a reasonably priced lunch, he wandered into Triplett-Day, where all manner of merchandise, including tar pine soap, lines the shelves at the front of the store and knick knacks decorate shelves on the walls.
The raised pharmacy window in back affords Day a view of the retail area and cafe tucked into a back corner of the building, which was remodeled and expanded after Day and Triplett bought the business. Historic photos line the walls of partitions that separate the cafe from the rest of the store.
“It’s like a hidden gem,” Molesworth said, “such a local spot. I just walked in one day. It’s got such a down-home feel. There’s not many places like this anymore. They’re fading away. I’ll be here as much as I can the next month.”
The atmosphere is not the only attraction. Molesworth fell in love with the veal cutlet. Lunches come with two sides, corn bread or biscuit and a glass of iced tea.
Freddie Sanderson likes the burger and fries. She’s 65 years old and has been coming to Triplett-Day since she was a child. They know when she walks in the door that she wants a burger with mayonnaise and cheese. Hold the lettuce.
“There’s nothing like this downtown,” Sanderson said. “There’s definitely no drugstore that serves food like this.”
Retirement doesn’t sound so good
Sadly, the Orange Grove location does not have a lunch counter. But it will soon have Day and his daughter, Poem Love, who has worked by his side since she graduated high school. She is a pharmacy technician.
She said she’s going to miss seeing the downtown customers who come in daily and taking care of their pharmacy customers there. Prescriptions are being transferred to T-D Drugs.
Poem’s mother, Joan Day, insists she is not moving to Orange Grove with them. Joan Day turns 84 on March 13. She has twice retired from nursing and used to work as a neonatal intensive care nurse.
She joined her family at Triplett-Day after she left nursing. She says she’s the “head flunkie.” In other words, she clears tables or does whatever else needs doing. Like her daughter and husband, she spends a good bit of time visiting with customers.
Still, she insists, this third retirement will be her final one.
Poem Love is looking forward to part-time work. She is a grandmother now and wants to spend more time with her grandson, Hugh Dennis Keating III, who is called “Tripp.”
She says that she and her father will work part time and take off on Saturdays.
And what does he say? Well, he hasn’t wrapped his head around part-time work, not at all.
He doesn’t have any hobbies, unless one counts the customers he loves seeing daily.
“I don’t know about that,” Day mutters. “I ain’t going home at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I won’t have anything else to do.”
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
