The Pilot News - The last soda fountain

“Mr.T’s” journey began when he was 14 years old and began working for Charles Judd in the latter’s drug store in Elkhart (Judd’s was a popular chain in the area), where Tusing and future wife Kay grew up. “He used to whistle at me when he’d go turn the lights on (at Judd’s),” recalls Kay with a smile. “I lived across the street from the store.”
When Judd helped Tusing a bit in college, the young man was asked to work for Judd for three years in exchange.
Ron Tusing’s three years were up in 1963, five years after he and Kay were married, she says, and that’s when the couple purchased the store from Barrett and Lucille Irving.
“I had never even heard of Culver,” recalls Kay. “When he first drove in by the park, he said, ‘This is it!’ I thought, ‘Oh my God!’
“I made up my mind I would get involved here (in Culver). Pretty quickly I felt right at home.”
Michelle (Tusing) Allyn – owner and operator of today’s Michelle’s Headquarters across the street at 114 North Main Street in downtown Culver, says she was about two years old when her parents moved to Culver from Warsaw and bought the pharmacy.
“My first memories were that (my dad) would let us help — my sister and I — for a couple of hours at a time when we were young and in grade school. He would let us pick out merchandise…we were greeting customers, that sort of thing.”
By age 12, Michelle was on the Mr. T’s schedule, like older sister Cindy and brothers Ryan and the late Todd. She recalls working the store’s cash register by that age, her father stressing each employee must know how to make change and not rely on the register’s “cheat” button. Another rule, she says, was if workers weren’t busy, they should be dusting, straightening shelves, or cleaning: the front door, for example, had to be sparkling clean with not a fingerprint on it.
Michelle started her Mr. T’s tenure at the downtown store, which she recalls was a high school hangout for many Culverites. “There are so many names and faces I remember that worked at the store and hung out at the store,” says Michelle. “I know from downtown there was a couple that came to the funeral home (when Ron Tusing died) and had familiar faces. I asked if they had worked for my dad and they said no, they just hung out at the drug store. From the late 60s to 1998 when he passed away, they thought enough of him to come.”
The downtown store, say both Kay and Michelle, still had the “big stone counter that had to have been there forever” (or at least from the store’s many decades as Culver City Drugs), with a shining soda fountain and four tables set up for eating and drinking.
Michelle also vividly recalls the downtown pharmacy’s sidewalk sales, for which she and her family sat outside for hours. Her father, she says, was adamant about employees’ dress when at work, only allowing male employees (or children) to wear jeans when cleaning, a luxury not afforded to female employees at the time. One year during sidewalk sales, Michelle protested. “I wore a sign that said, ‘Mr. T is unfair to women!’ He got a kick out of it; he liked the attention. It didn’t get me real far.”
Michelle also recalls a journey with her father during her sixth grade year to the corporate offices in Indianapolis of Hook’s Drugs, rumored to be on its way to Culver, where two successful (and local) drug stores were operating at the time. Hook’s did, in fact, open a store in Culver (today’s CVS Pharmacy) during the mid-1970s, but Michelle says “it worked out ok,” though she says the chain store’s arrival probably contributed to Rob McKinnis – then-owner of the former Rector’s drug store on the east side of Main Street – partnering in the late 1970s with her father at his Academy Road store and closing McKinnis’ own store.
When Mr. T’s moved to its longest-lasting and final location on Academy Road in 1977, a new soda fountain was constructed, with a memorable mural of Maxinkuckee sailboats and Black Horse Troopers on the wall behind (part of the mural today can be seen on the walls of the upper level of the Corndance Café in downtown Culver).
Mr. T’s carried its downtown menu to the Academy Road location, Michelle notes. “I just remember making chocolate sodas, (and) we had eight to 10 flavors we could all rattle off of the hard ice cream. My favorite things there were vanilla Cokes. And we had the chocolate phosphate with marshmallow topping; I can’t think what they used to call it. We made cherry Cokes and chocolate Cokes…people tell me they still remember the Superman ice cream cones.”
The Tusing mother and daughter both recall the joys of “after hours hot fudge sundaes” and other treats. “After you make them for people all day,” Kay explains, “you get a yearning for them yourself!”
Ron Tusing’s family didn’t get to watch him make the “secret recipe” chocolate syrup he mixed up in a special pot hidden in the store basement, allowing the mixture to sit overnight. “The chocolate pot recipe definitely came from the (pharmacy’s) previous owners,” notes Michelle. “It was something he continued (which) they had done. As long as the fountain was going, he was mixing his own chocolate syrup.”
Mr. T’s soda fountain closed in the summer of 1985, ending a nearly 100 year old American tradition in Culver. Upkeep of the fountain’s equipment, says Michelle, was no longer cost effective, and ingredients needed for Tusing’s secret chocolate recipe were no longer available. Replacing the soda fountain and counter was an expanded greeting card selection, which Michelle says seemed to be the better business decision, though there was “huge disappointment from people” at the fountain’s closing.
Michelle says she visited a drug store elsewhere in Indiana and was pleased to find phosphates available, one of few occasions she’s found such beverages any more. “I went behind the counter and they let me make a vanilla phosphate!”
Besides medicines, Mr. T’s, sold an array of items one expected to find in a quality drug store at the time, from Russel Stover and other candy, to magazines, puzzles, comic books, perfumes and gifts, and later photo development and liquor.
Kay and Michelle say well-known Culverite Lois Curtis designed the iconic Mr. T’s logo used at the store and on medicine bottles and advertising materials. The cartoon pharmacist, says Kay, was meant to depict Ron Tusing, who wore his glasses and hair similar to the cartoon figure.
For 22 of Mr. T’s business years, Kay was an aide at Culver Elementary School, though she helped at the drug store as well. “He used to tell people I was too independent,” she laughs, “So I was a fill-in! He wanted everybody to be very strict on hours. If he posted hours, you had to be there.”
Mr. T’s offered more “old fashioned” services than just its soda fountain. “People could call him any time of the night,” recalls Kay, for home delivery or pickup of needed medication.
“A couple of Thanksgivings,” says Michelle, “the phone would ring after dinner and with a smile on his face he’d say, ‘I’ve got to go save a life.’ He definitely went above and beyond.”
It was also Tusing’s priority to be involved in the Culver community, say Kay and Michelle. He was a founding member of Culver’s Jaycees, a member of the Chamber from his first year here as well as its president on several occasions. He was a charter member of Culver’s Kiwanis club as well as a member of Wesley United Methodist Church, running Culver’s After-Prom for 15 years and sponsoring bowling and other teams in the area.
Ron Tusing’s 1998 death was a shock, even though he had quietly tried to prepare his family for the inevitability, aware as he was of his own heart problems. The Tusings tried hard to find an independent entity to buy Mr. T’s and keep it open, the cost of hiring someone to replace him as pharmacist too high. “I don’t think any of us thought we would dissolve the drug store,” says Michelle, who adds many of the pharmacy’s goods and accessories went to the free clinic in Plymouth once it became apparent Mr. T’s was closing for good.
“I think he instilled in all of us to live each day,” says Michelle of her father. “He practiced that; he enjoyed life.
“Anybody that was a customer, he appreciated them so much. They were his extended family. We’ve had many stories, after he passed away, from people saying, ‘Oh, your dad came out at 2 a.m. to bring my child Tylenol.’ Something real simple like that…it was not just prescriptions. You wouldn’t find that ever again, I don’t think.”