Drug Store Heist Foiled

The blog is called, "Life in a Small Town" for a good reason.  I live in one.  There are many stories that abound about Canal Fulton, and back in the day when I wrote a column for the local historical society, people told me a bunch of them.

One of the best ones, though, is one that I witnessed myself more than 30 years ago.  The newspaper's offices were in an historic building in downtown Canal Fulton.  When I was at work that morning, one of the employees walked in saying that the door to the pharmacy next store was ajar.

So we called our police, and they arrived by car and parked on the street.  They pulled guns and entered the pharmacy building.  Before long, the chief came out and he hastily called to one of the officers to, "Go get the camera."  The overweight officer started running down the alley across the street, and when the chief noticed, he boomed, "It's in the trunk."

Well, they went back inside with the camera and it was a LONG time later after the pharmacist arrived to take a good look at the store and its contents that the police told us nothing was stolen.  Nothing.  No drugs.  No trinkets.  The door had been open from the wee hours of the morning until after 9:00 a.m.  No one went in.  The robbers were gone.  What had happened?

Across the street from the pharmacy and adjacent to the alley lived Clyde Gainey, an old gentleman usually referred to as the town's historican.  He was in his 80s by this time.  Apparently, all of the crow barring made some noise and Clyde woke up.  He went to the front door and turned on his porch light.  The thieves figured it was all over and although they'd gotten the door open and perhaps they were already inside, they fled the scene.  Clyde hadn't seen a thing, so he went back to bed.

A good moral to the story is just this:  It doesn't matter how old we are; we can always make a difference.