Life With Ferris: Fairyland Pharmacy Delivers

  • Monday, July 26, 2021
Mom at Fairyland Pharmacy
Mom at Fairyland Pharmacy

After living in North Chattanooga for over 30 years, my parents moved to North Hermitage Avenue on Lookout almost two decades ago. Their house was beautiful, perfectly appointed and landscaped, and the neighbors couldn’t have been more welcoming. In short, they loved their new digs immediately. But there was one important aspect that they didn’t know about, one that I, as an advocate for getting them to move closer to me, had forgotten to mention.

Fairyland Pharmacy delivers. 

“Fairyland Pharmacy delivers,” my mother said accusingly a few days after she moved to Lookout.

“Yes,” I said slowly, realizing I hadn’t even been aware of my best weapon in the battle to convince them to move to “Sugar Hill.” 

“We had no idea!” my father said, pursing his lips and scowling at me like I had purposefully deceived him.

The truth is, it hadn’t occurred to me to let them know because I took it for granted. Home with a sick baby with a fever and another sleeping baby upstairs, I just called (706) 820-1627 and asked to have the prescription delivered. Those particular numerals on my landline phone were way more worn than the 3, 4, 5 or 9. That phone number is engraved indelibly in my mind, as much as my parents’ phone number is. 

My mother stopped unpacking and called her friends in North Chattanooga to tell them the pharmacy up here delivered. That one phone call may have caused the land rush of 1998 on Lookout. 

But really, I thought it was adorable the way they went on and on about that service the pharmacy offered. It was so cute the way they couldn’t get over the service I was used to and took for granted. But give me one afternoon of driving rain or icy roads and a sick child asleep in the bed who I want to protect from the elements, and all of a sudden, I appreciate that delivery service. Really, you don’t even have to be sick or require a prescription; you can just order whatever you need and the pharmacy will deliver it. 

I can walk to the Fairyland Pharmacy from my house. I can walk to the Café on the Corner from my house. I can walk to Market on the Mountain from my house, and I can call Amanda at the Lookout Mountain Service Center and she can pretty much tell me what is the matter with my car and how much it’s going to cost to fix it. And I can walk home after I drop it off.

There are lots of other reasons that I think Lookout Mountain is a sweet place to live, but since July is officially Buy Local or Bye Local month here, I’ll concentrate on the small businesses that make living on Lookout so darn lovely. I don’t want to say “bye” to any of them, and although the pandemic has put us all through our paces in myriad ways, it’s been super tough for small businesses.

My only regret is not telling my parents that the pharmacy delivered. Forget the high ceilings and perfect studio space, if I’d just let them in on that little detail, they would have done what I wanted them a lot sooner. 

* * *

Ferris Robinson is the author of three children’s books, “The Queen Who Banished Bugs,” “The Queen Who Accidentally Banished Birds,” and “Call Me Arthropod” in her pollinator series “If Bugs Are Banished.” “Making Arrangements” is her first novel. “Dogs and Love - Stories of Fidelity” is a collection of true tales about man’s best friend. Her website is ferrisrobinson.com and you can download a free pollinator poster there. She is the editor of The Lookout Mountain Mirror and The Signal Mountain Mirror.


Ferris Robinson
Ferris Robinson
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