Archive for November, 2017

Please join us this Saturday, December 2, for our Open House and Customer Appreciation evening from 5-8 pm during Christmas Under the Clock.

We will have lots of food and other goodies, plus seasonal music and discounts, including 30 percent off all non-prescription items.

Singer and songwriter, Anne Marie Gadd will be in the store with us celebrating the evening with her music. Watch her sing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” on Youtube HERE.

We’ll also have Julie Confar in the store making cotton candy and sub sandwiches from our local Subway. Additionally, there will be lots of homemade cookies and coloring and crafts for the kids.

Christmas Under the Clock is again being sponsored this year by UPCO (Uptown Plain City Organization) and the Village of Plain City.

Participating open house locations will be giving away lots of prizes, gifts, and refreshments. The more open houses you visit, the more chances you have to win. Pick up a map at the first open house you visit to locate all of the other places holding open houses. There will also be a copy of the map posted on the Christmas Under the Clock Facebook page, so check it out before you head out for the evening.

Please bring some non-perishable food items or toiletries for the Plain City Food Pantry, 156 West Main Street. Share your blessings this holiday season.

Get around town safely by riding one of the shuttle vans running from Lovejoy’s Market to Yoder’s Hardware between 5:30 and 8 pm, arriving and leaving every thirty minutes. Wagon rides will take place in the Uptown leaving Lovejoy Plaza and traveling to Yoder’s Hardware to visit Santa.

Here at the drugstore, we will be giving away gift certificates to many local businesses. So stop in and sign up to win!

We’ll be raffling off gift certificates for:

• Lovejoy’s Market-Movie Night Gift Basket
• Main Street Treasures
• Mike’s Pit Stop
• Ol’ 42 Grub House
• Plain City Computers
• Plain City Lanes
• Rex’s Marathon
• Tique-Tock

Christmas Under the Clock actually gets under way at 5 pm with the Tree Lighting Ceremony in Bicentennial Park (the Flatiron between Chillicothe and Main Streets). There will be local carolers, Starlight Twirlers (baton twirlers), Santa, and much more entertainment at the Tree Lighting. The tree will be lit up by the Tree Lighting Pixies, winners of the Christmas Coloring Contest.

Once you’ve been dazzled by the tree lighting ceremony and entertainers, head over to the Plain City Auction, 145 East Main Street, for a Christmas Raffle and Craft Fair.

You can take a horse drawn wagon ride to Yoder’s True Value Hardware for photos with Santa. As you wait for a wagon ride in Lovejoy Plaza, enjoy ham and bean soup from UPCO and provided by Der Dutchman restaurant.

Rock on Ice is back this year. See them create ice masterpieces in Lovejoy Plaza.

On your way to see Santa, stop by the Plain City Library, 305 West Main Street, for live music with Glee Noel a cappella quartet and the Friends of the Library’s Moving Sale, which actually gets started at noon on December 2. The sale will feature supplies, equipment, adult and children’s books, movies, music, and more. Proceeds go to benefit the Friends of the Plain City Public Library who support library programming and improvements. The Library is currently closed until December 11, but will be open for their Holiday Open House and Moving Sale on December 2.

Like the Library on Facebook HERE and keep up on all their events.

Carlisle Gifts will hold a “Do You See What I See?” Open House during Christmas Under the Clock. Receive a free gift with a purchase of $10 or more while supplies last. Additionally, beginning on December 1 at 8 am and continuing through December 2 at 9 pm, you can:

• Find the Christmas Piggle for gift certificates, discounts or giveaways.
• Enter the Raffle for the Ohio State Garden Bench! The drawing will be held at 6:30pm, December 2. Must be present to win.
• Win Prize Drawings Every hour on the hour from 10 am to 8 pm.
• Win Vera Bradley bags, Noelle clothing or purses, and much more.
• Listen to Christmas Carolers.
• Enjoy the Hot Chocolate Bar and Der Dutchman Refreshments.

For more information on the 16th Annual Christmas Under the Clock celebration, go HERE and read Julie Weaver’s article in The Madison Press HERE.

You can also find out more about what is going on by LIKING Christmas Under the Clock on Facebook HERE. You can also like UPCO’s Facebook page HERE.

While you can walk Main Street downtown, it is a little more tricky to get out to us on Route 42. Luckily, as mentioned previously, there will be van shuttles available to take people from Yoder’s Hardware to Lovejoy’s IGA and up and down Jefferson Avenue (Route 42). Let the skilled Christmas Under the Clock volunteer drivers get you safely where you need to go.

For Charlie Lovejoy, the grocery business makes up the fiber of who he is. In fact, the grocery business seems to be woven into his genetic material; material he inherited from his parents and grandparents who also harbored a love for the family owned grocery store.

Charlie’s grandparents, Louise and Paul Lovejoy, moved from Portsmouth, Ohio to Plain City in 1947. They opened the first Lovejoy’s family grocery in 1950. That store, located at the corner of 161 and 42 in the space recently occupied by Domino’s Pizza, supplied food and products to the Plain City community from that corner lot until the family relocated the business downtown.

During those early years, a ten-year-old Bud Lovejoy, Charlie’s father, began working in the store with his parents. Bud remained their right hand man doing anything he could to help the family business until their retirement in 1970. At that time, Bud officially took over as owner and manager of the grocery store.

In 1985, an electrical fire destroyed the grocery store. Undaunted by the disaster, the family reopened the business in June on West Main Street at the present day location of Yoder’s Hardware. The empty lot downtown was later turned into Lovejoy Plaza, hosting a number of businesses.

Fire similarly devastated the family business again in 2001. While building a new 21,000 square foot store, a fire in the old store on West Main Street left the Lovejoy family again without a working grocery. With the new store not yet completed and the old store unusable, the family scrambled to finish construction and resume business in the Plain City community.

Although the grocery store has moved four times in just over fifty years, the lesson learned from these relocations is that the business just changed streets, never zip codes. The Lovejoy family never left the community. Lovejoy’s grocery store has been a part of Plain City for almost seven decades.

The newest store at 900 Village Boulevard opened on September 18, 2001.

2001 was a year of new beginnings as well as heart breaking endings. Not only was the grocery store temporarily lost but, in March of that year, the patriarch of the Lovejoy family, Bud, passed away.

Now sixteen years later from the date the new store opened, more heartbreak has arrived for the Lovejoy family.

Lovejoy’s Market will be closing.

Charlie and the Lovejoy family have always made the Plain City community an integral part of their lives, supporting numerous organizations, clubs, churches, and school activities through their roles as leaders in the grocery business.

They need your support now.

Stop in today and buy something to help Charlie clear off the shelves and finish paying his employees and vendors. Even if you only buy one thing, make this ending a tiny bit easier for Charlie.

After 67 years, a Plain City icon is leaving us. Please help Charlie close the doors of Lovejoy’s Market knowing that the village supported his final efforts.

Charlie and C.J. Lovejoy

Charlie with his dad, Bud Lovejoy.

The photo above is where the Super Duper used to stand on West Main Street (now Lovejoy Plaza) before the fire that destroyed the building and caused them to relocate to the current location of Yoder’s Hardware.

The partial newspaper article below, from The Plain City Advocate, was written in September of 2001 when the new store opened at 900 Village Boulevard.

After Black Friday and the mad rush to start the holiday shopping season, small businesses ask you to take a deep breath and shop small and locally on Saturday, November 25, Small Business Saturday. 

Shopping locally helps your community in a number of ways:

• Improves your family’s health by eating locally grown produce and food from farmers you know.
• Helps the local economy by keeping money within the community.
• Protects the environment because you’re not wasting fuel and resources traveling long distances to shop.
• Allows you to know the people behind the products you buy.
• Keeps your community unique with interesting stores found nowhere else.
• Supports business owners who also live in your community, are your neighbors, send their kids to the local schools, go to church at your church, pay taxes that benefit your police department and firefighters, support the local PTA and animal shelter, and also shop at other local businesses.

Here is a really cool infographic that shows the benefits of shopping within your own community. Click HERE to take a look.

We hope that you will stop in the pharmacy on Saturday from 9 am until noon and take a moment to shop within our store. We appreciate your loyalty and business so much and your continued support allows us to remain in the Plain City community.

Where you shop matters.

Joe and I want to wish everyone a very peaceful and blessed Thanksgiving.

Please note that Plain City Druggist will be closed on Thursday, November 23, in observance of the holiday.

We will re-open on Friday, November 24, at 9 am.

If you have an emergency or need anything while we are closed, please call the after hours number: 614-240-8421. If Joe does not call you back within an hour, call again and leave another message with your phone number.

Thank you to everyone reading this blog posting. We appreciate your continued support of us and the pharmacies!

The open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, began on November 1 and runs through December 15. This is a shortened period of time than previously, so if you need healthcare, either to renew and change your plan or get it for the first time, please visit the Healthcare.gov web site as soon as possible. You can also get started by calling 1-800-318-2596.

Coverage, if you enroll, begins on January 1, 2018. If you fail to enroll before December 15, you will have to wait until next fall to take part in the ACA and your coverage will not begin until 2019.

If you are having trouble navigating the Healthcare.gov site and need help, you can go to localhelp.healthcare.gov and put in your zip code to find assistance near you.

For some really helpful information on the ACA, download the National Women’s Law Center’s healthcare tool kit HERE.

There is also information about the five most common questions concerning the Affordable Care Act at this easy to follow web site from The New York Times. Read it HERE.