ILLUSTRATION BY LARS LEETARU
There’s a bird’s nest in my pharmacy’s drive-thru lane. Inside it, actually. It bulges from the middle of the C in the large words Drive Thru Pharmacy. It’s been there forever, stained with droppings. It’s disgusting. I’m a regular customer and don’t want to be annoying. Please tell them to get rid of it. —GRUMPTY NESTER
DEAR GRUMPTY:
We must occasionally remind readers that the Doctor is not a “troubleshooter” for aggrieved citizens. Local television news provides that service during big ratings months. Also, we have expunged the pharmacy’s name and location from your question, based upon simple discreetness, courtesy, and advice from our legal department.
Traveling incognito, the Doctor nonchalantly asked two pharmacy employees how long they thought the bird family may have been residing within the letter C. Each shrugged and guessed “at least a year.” But please do not assume an indifference here. Reasons other than neglect or uncleanliness might explain why the nest has been left undisturbed, and like everyone, we wish to assume only the best of intentions from our friends at Big Pharma.
Hopefully the Doctor’s nudge will inspire action, and your pharmacy will do what pharmacies do best: Insert the nest inside an amber-colored plastic bottle that could easily hold 12 nests, place the bottle inside a paper bag that’s triple-stapled to a four-page receipt with unreadably small print, and hand it to the next drive-thru customer.
I am five generations removed from Cincinnatian Louis Lipp, who, in the late 1800s, had a very successful company making plumbing fixtures. Family lore says he invented America’s first flush toilet, but I never see his name when I research the history. Can you find out more about him? —FLUSH THIS OUT
DEAR FLUSH:
The Doctor shall try to resist making bathroom jokes. The Louis Lipp Company was indeed an impressively large business. It had branches from Boston to Los Angeles, with its Winton Place factory covering 14 acres behind today’s Michel Tire store. Mr. Lipp designed and manufactured some of the most modern porcelain bathtubs and toilets of his era, some of which are still sought online.
The flush toilet (hold that snicker) was developed incrementally by many contributors over many decades, so the Doctor cannot support claims that Mr. Lipp invented it. He deserves thanks, however, for his 1893 patent of the “strap and pivot hinge,” better known today as the double-hinged toilet seat (must…resist…joke…). He also achieved immortality with an 1896 patent for the inner-tank “float-operated ballcock” (mmphh! mmphh!). Profits flowed freely (just stop!) until 1913, when the company was convicted of anti-trust activity and Mr. Lipp’s partner went to prison. A few years later the company went down the tubes (sigh). Case (and lid) closed.
As a high-schooler in the late 1960s, I worked at Western Hills Plaza with buddies I’m still friends with. I remember enjoying lunches at a nearby fast food restaurant called Teddy Bear, but they don’t. I’m sure I’m right. It was a small burger/fish sandwich place on Werk Road. Set them straight! —REDDY TEDDY
DEAR REDDY:
Consider your friends straightened. Your memory cells win—this time, anyway. There were five Teddy Bear restaurants in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky between 1963 and 1969, launched by late restaurant mogul David Frisch of the famous “Frisch’s Big Boy” franchise.
Newspaper articles seemed rather clumsy explaining the Teddy Bear restaurant concept, describing it with quotation marks as a “drive-through service.” This was a novelty, because back then even McDonald’s required customers to park first. “It is possible for the customer to place his order and pick it up in less than a minute without ever leaving his car,” they said, as if explaining the telephone to Vikings.
Today, of course, everything has improved. Now it’s possible to drive right up and idle behind a line of motionless cars, conveniently yell your order into a squawk box, park in a numbered space, and cheerily be handed someone else’s order. Or if you wish, you can go inside and cheerily negotiate with a screen. (Insert broken ice cream machine joke here.)
Submit your questions about the city’s peculiarities here.
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