For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. In this September 1977 Classic article, David McHam describes the Baylor Drug store run by Baylor University alumnus Roger Edens.
Roger Edens apologizes for the clutter in the drug store. He has to search for a chair to accommodate a visitor. The fountain has been closed for four years, the tables and booths are gone. Gone, too, are the coffee drinkers and the couples who would come over from Carroll Library for Cokes in the evening.
The photographs are there, although some have been loaned out to the B Association. They include pictures of Baylor Stadium during games, Homecoming queen nominees, assorted football players, random football teams, Larry Isbell and Stanley Williams, Bill Henderson, Abner McCall, Grant Teaff. A page from the Waco Times Herald of 1927 tells of the Round Rock bus disaster.
A customer is trying to find a bottle of Kaopectate and Edens tells her exactly where to find it among the cups, candles, sealing wax, stationery, balloons, file folders, bicycle locks, dart games, umbrellas, heating lamps, coffee makers, brushes, panty hose, vacuum cleaners, gloves, light bulbs, dust mops, saws, Christmas tree lights, nails, magazines, shuttlecocks, thread, shirts, olive oil, soft drinks, greeting cards, BU baseball hats and fly swatters.
A sign over a box of toothpaste proclaims: “Best Price in the World at Baylor Drug.” Marked out are 25 cents and 19 cents. “Now 9 cents,” the sign proclaims. “Wow!” Edens explains that his philosophy is to buy cheap and sell cheap. He likes the idea of people coming into the store. Religion professor Russell Lester is looking for an alarm clock with a luminous dial. Drama director Bill Cook buys a hair dryer and Edens gives him a discount.
The merchandise is incidental, an excuse for Roger Edens being at the corner at Fifth and Speight. True the sign outside reads “School Supplies, Cosmetics, Gifts.” The sign that tells more about this place is in the window on the Speight side. It says: “Home of the Baylor Bears.”
Baylor has the Texas Collection for official memorabilia, the Union Building for gathering, and other familiar places in buildings and on the walkways. But, Baylor Drug is the place of memories. Remember the heated donuts, the fountain Cokes? Remember Mr. Penn, Ruby (she’s back again), Dotty, Joyce and Robert, who cleaned up? Remember Dow Heard, Herbie Atkins, Marie Cheatham, John Collins, Dan Jacks, Sam Boyd, Lois Ferguson, Mark White, Hayden Fry, Sammye Mayo, Joe Allbritton, Ralph Davis, Grady Nutt, Jack Dillard, Judy Cartwright, Chris Hansen and Jack Simons? Remember when Charlie McGregor used to teach his law class in the back booth in the summer? Remember the day Paul Baker brought Bob Hope in? Were you there the night the Kingston Trio sat in a booth? Remember when Ed and Laura DeLong had their wedding reception there? Remember the deck of Rook cards you bought there? Remember when you could take a chance on the price of a banana split by pricking a balloon with the price on a slip of paper inside? Remember the celebrations the Friday night of Homecoming?
Once upon a time the Fifth and Speight area was the center of campus activity. The library was in Carroll, students lived in Burleson and Harrington, and Tidwell, Old Main and Carroll Science were the main classroom buildings. Those are old times now, recalled by students of the Forties, Fifties and Sixties as the good ole days.
When new buildings were built, students changed their patterns. The Elite Downtown closed and students stopped congregating the way they used to at the Chuck Wagon and at Baylor Drug. Eventually on a sad day in 1973 Roger Edens closed the fountain. He says the fountain never made any money anyway, and when the new library opened he didn’t see the need to subsidize the fountain to bring in customers.
Everything seems changed now. The campus, Fifth Street, downtown. What hasn’t been built has been remodeled. Even the Bear Pit. Only the basement of Carroll Library seems unchanged from twenty years ago. Where did those apartment buildings come from? The street car tracks are only slightly visible on Speight. From the outside Baylor Drug is Baylor Drug. Hasn’t it always been there? And Roger Edens, with the cigar, has he changed? Could it be we grew up together and never noticed the change?
From his vantage point he has seen the change. He helped move the drug store to the present location in 1935. He’s been there himself since 1948. He remembers the World War II veterans and every group of students since. Of the Sixties he said, “They weren’t students any longer. They were individuals.” Now the pendulum is swinging back. The girls are wearing dresses again. The affluence of today impresses him. “Now they have so much more money than they used to have. In the old days we’d have fifteen or twenty cars parked along Fifth Street. Now everybody’s got a car, but very few of them have two. Parking has become the real problem of a university.”
Wanta talk football? He played in ’36 and ’37 and has a bum knee to show for it. He has known the players and the coaches from then until now: Morley Jennings, Ken Casner, Del Shofner, Adrian Burk, Frank Kimbrough, Ronnie Goodwin, Bob Woodruff, Don Trull, Roger Goree, George Sauer, Bubba Hicks, Frank Broyles, Ronnie Bull, Charlie Horton, Harlan Lane, L. G. Dupree, Al Witcher, Monk Edwards, James Jeffrey, etc., etc., etc.
Roger Edens figures he went twenty years without missing a home game. And he remembers them, home and away: The ’36 game in Austin when Billy Patterson and Lloyd Russell brought the Bears back from an 18-0 third quarter deficit, the 7-7 tie with Texas in 1941 when Texas had the great team, the 21-20 defeat at Austin in 1953, the 7-6 loss at TCU in 1956, the Sugar Bowl victory over Tennessee that same year, the ’63 game in Austin and finally the 1974 victory over Texas in the championship season — “Hallelujah!”
But wait, aren’t a lot of Texas games in that group? Maybe so, but you see, Roger Edens has got Texas stuck in his craw. “I just hate Texas athletics,” he said. “So many times they came along and beat us.” In the sidewalk outside Baylor Drug is a kind of historical marker: BEAT TEXAS. Edens has used peas, candles and green socks to hex Tex. “I’ve gone in the bedroom after we lost to Texas and cried even though I had people at the house.” Sometimes, he thinks, the officiating helped the orange along, as in 1953 and 1964. Roger Edens doesn’t cater to the UT traffic. “If they walk in here with an orange t-shirt on I’ll tell them they can’t get waited on.”
Into the drug store walk two kids. They make the careless carpenter sign and say, “Boo Baylor, Boo Baylor. Hook ’em Homs.” They are the grandchildren of Jack and Flo Staples of Austin. The Staples are old friends even though they are Texas types. Edens and Staples had an agreement in ’64 that the loser had to sit in the stadium until everyone else had left. Baylor lost. “You have no idea how many people at an afternoon ball game stay till after dark!” Edens said. Another time Edens walked home from the stadium after a similar agreement with Staples. The Edens, Roger and Penny, met the Staples when Roger worked at Baytown during the war. Later Staples went to Texas. “I’ve never forgiven him,” Edens said.
Roger Edens was reared where the Texaco station is located now at Fifth and the Interstate. The drug store was then Barnett Pharmacy, which was in the Behren’s Building at Fifth and Speight until it was moved across the street in 1935. Harold Barnett, known as Mr. B, ran the pharmacy. He was joined in 1926 by Mr. Penn, who is John C. Pennington, Eden’s father-in- law. When Barnett died in 1948 Edens bought his interest. The name was changed to Baylor Drug. Mr. Penn, now 78, still works in the store. He ran the pharmacy until it was closed about fifteen years ago.
Roger and Penny have raised three children. Two of them, John and David, are Baylor graduates. Edens has been active in the Baylor Alumni Association for almost thirty years and treasurer for twenty-one years. He has supervised Cabaret at Homecoming almost every year since 1960. He’s a deacon at Lake Shore Baptist Church. He plays golf. But mostly he’s Baylor. “It becomes a part of your life,” he said. “Nobody ever had a job they liked more than I like this one.”
