Lonnie Hollingsworth became the owner of a small pharmacy at 34th Street and Slide Road in 1959, and before he was through with it, customers were also coming to buy hardware, televisions, cosmetics, plumbing supplies, and paint. He was a Kodak and Polaroid dealer, too.
"What I did basically was, whatever sold, I had it," he remembers.
Hollingsworth had graduated from the University of Texas pharmacy school in 1957, then went to work in Plainview.
After 18 months, he got a job running a pharmacy in Midland. He might have stayed, except that he and his wife, Nancy, had two small children, Преобразованный and Heather Lea, and the work hours were long.
"My wife did not like it - in those days a pharmacist routinely worked 10 or 12 hours a day."
That work day could, and often did, stretch to 15 hours.
"I always wanted to own my own store. I was hardwired, programmed - whatever you want to call it - to own my own drug store," he said.
"So, after about six months, she with two small babies in a little rent house, and me working night and day ... we decided it was time to find my own store."
Hollingsworth found two motivated pharmacy-store sellers in Lubbock.
Dr. Royce Lewis and John Hays had set up a store at 34th Street and Slide Road, and called it L&H Drug Store, with the L&H a reference to their last names.
Hays' brother-in-law, Leland "Lee" Wehde, was going to Texas Tech and working part time in the store. Even today, he questions the wisdom of the venture set up by Lewis and Hays: "They weren't pharmacists," he remembers.
They had hired a pharmacist, but he soon left, and they replaced him with two retired - and aging - pharmacists, according to Wehde.
"One of them I had to go get and take him home, because he didn't drive. Then Lonnie came along and wanted to buy the store - and they wanted to sell it. They had already tried to sell it to several people."
Hollingsworth remembers that he got a $10,000 bank loan on the credit strength of having paid for a Motorola television set for two years while he was serving in the Navy at Hawaii. A second loan was provided by the previous owners for the balance.
"I bought the whole store for about $17,000 - lock, stock and barrel."
Hollingsworth kept the name, figuring it could stand for Lonnie and Hollingsworth; it also could represent the children's names of Lonnie and Heather.
"It was a financial decision, and a lot of people thought I had partners in that, but I never did."
He seemed to be located a long way from the downtown area of Lubbock at the time. "There was a cotton patch between me and town, and there was a farm house there. Across the street was a drive-in theater.
L&H Drug Store was a slow starter for Hollingsworth: "The first day I had it was a Saturday. I may have filled 10 prescriptions. And I will never forget Sunday. I was open Sunday, and I filled four."
He rented the building for a flat rate. "I realized real quick that if I could sell everything and stock it up heavy, I would. I was only paying so much a square foot, so if I could go up or sideways, that's what I did," he said.
"After about three or four years, my landlord, who owned the place across the street, agreed to build me a building. And I moved out of that old building."
Hollingsworth counts Wehde as his first employee, and Wehde remembers it that way also.
"Lots of times it would just be Lonnie and me. I would run the fountain and cash register, and if we needed to deliver prescriptions, I would deliver them in my car, and Lonnie would run the whole store by himself. Lonnie worked seven days a week."
When L&H temporarily moved across the street south to the shopping center area, the store wasn't closed during the move.
"We were still putting drugs up in the pharmacy when the sun came up the next morning," Wehde said.
Hollingsworth eventually opened a total of four stores in Lubbock, one on south University Avenue in an area now occupied by a Kmart store.
Wehde remembers, "I worked in the store at south University. We were partners in that store. There was a theater there called the Golden Horseshoe, so we named the store L&H Horseshoe Drug.
"Eventually, we split up, and I went off to Southwestern Oklahoma State University where I had gone to pharmacy school, and went to work teaching for a few years."
Later, Wehde worked for United Supermarkets, managing the company's pharmacies across Texas.
The merchandising and inventory techniques that Hollingsworth used became a signature of his success, and apparently contributed to it.
It was the wide variety and availability of merchandise to customers that caused many to come to his store. In emergencies, even basic plumbing supplies could be purchased on the weekend from his store.
Wehde remembers, "He had a postal substation in there, and Western Union. His mother ran the post office and the Western Union for a lot of years. And of course, he had small televisions, and all kinds of appliances. He even sold guns and fishing licenses. There was always a notary public there, and always a fountain."
Hollingsworth's brother, Sam, also worked in the business.
Tobacco products didn't have such a bad reputation at the time, and Hollingsworth remembers, "I had a big 6-foot cigar case and cigarettes. I'm not proud of that, but I did. A regular drug store would have a fountain, tobacco, a big magazine business and records. I added all those things."
Janet Hardin, who began working in the business in 1967, recalls that if someone requested an item that L&H didn't have, he would try to order it. "Whatever people needed, he would try and find it."
Ironically, his propensity toward merchandise and service enabled the business to thrive in a pharmacy market challenged by chain stores.
"I made money off the items they didn't stock," he said. "That's how I competed with them. In fact, I got a lot of business from referrals from pharmacist friends in the chains. I would call on them, tell them I would get it, and they would send in their customers."
He acknowledges, though, that he worked during the halcyon days of the independent pharmacies.
Hollingsworth sold his pharmacy business to Eckerd's in 1996, according to Hardin. She stayed as an employee when Hollingsworth began investing in real estate properties.
"He's a good person to work for," she said. "I've been working for him all these years, and he always treated me right."
Hollingsworth served as a city councilman from 1968 to 1974, and was executive secretary of the West Texas Pharmacy Association for a number of years.
"He put a lot of work and time into that organization, and brought it up to where it is now," Wehde said.
Hollingsworth keeps his pharmacy license current, and does consulting work. But there is one thing he misses:
"The hardest thing about selling out was losing contact with all the customers."
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