© St. Petersburg Times, published May 27, 2002
Follow the dancing chicken
We've reached the end, but it seems like just the beginning. So many more Wonders of Florida are left to explore. Of course, summertime is just around the corner, and that's a good time for a family visit to Weedon Island, or Boyd Hill, or other wonderful places in our state. Remember all those fabulous Florida authors we met? Why not put their novels on your summer reading list?
But hold on. We're not quite ready to leave you yet. In this final story of the series, we'll spend some time getting to know a man who marched into Florida and found gold.
Oh, yes: He also found dancing chickens.
So who was this "Doc" Webb who caused such a stir in St. Petersburg? Sit back for a true "rags to riches" story.
James Earl Webb, born on Aug. 31, 1899, was a worker from the start. By age 9, Jimmy was mowing lawns, selling lemonade and delivering papers -- not too unusual for a kid, right?
But this wasn't enough for Jimmy.
The Webb family moved to Knoxville, Tenn. Jimmy decided to quit school to work full time. And we do mean full time. Selling goods at a drugstore during the day. Setting pins at a bowling alley at night. Seven days a week. No wonder Jimmy suffered a nervous collapse.
The end of Jimmy Webb? Not a chance. He recovered. Boy, did he recover! At 20, he bought the drugstore.
So where did he get the name "Doc"? Well, Jimmy decided to start making his own products to sell in his drugstore and around the country. Sorbo-Rub, Indian Wahoo Bitters and Doc Webb's 608 promised instant cures and put money into Webb's pockets.
Now what for Doc Webb? On to St. Petersburg!
The year is 1925. Florida is at the height of what will later be known as the land boom. The tourism industry is big, but sale of Florida property is even bigger. Six thousand real estate agents, one-third of the city's population, have flooded St. Petersburg. Prices of land keep going up and up and up.
Doc Webb joins a former coworker, Hayworth Johnson, and opens a small drugstore on the corner of Ninth Street and Second Avenue S.
Suddenly, the land boom became a bust. Here's how historian Walter Fuller explained it: "The 1925 Florida land boom just ran out of fuel in the late fall of 1925 and quit -- we just ran out of suckers. That's all. We got all their money, then started trading with overdues. We became the suckers."
Was Doc Webb worried? Nah. He started cutting prices to attract customers. Johnson saw this as a sure path to bankruptcy and sold his interest in the company to Webb. Enter Webb's Cut Rate Drug Company.
Now the Depression years have arrived. Millions of Americans are out of work. Businesses shut down. Bread lines form.
Time for a retailer to play it safe? Not if you're Doc Webb. Time to expand. Eventually, the store becomes Webb's City -- a 77-store complex covering 10 city blocks.
Talk about one-stop shopping. Webb's City had it all, including a prescription department, surgical supplies, cosmetics and toiletries, Furniture City (covering seven floors!), a florist, a dry cleaning plant, a service station and automobile association, a bank service, a dance studio, an ice cream plant, a coffee roasting plant and, of course, Doc's Original Drugstore.
Even more than he was a retailer, Doc Webb was a promoter. The gimmicks he used to lure nearly 60,000 customers a day are legendary. "A store? It's a beehive. It's a roaring circus midway. It's a separate world. Everyone should experience shopping at least once at Webb's," wrote historian Fuller.
Not everyone found these schemes amusing.
Each day, Webb sent out a group of employees to buy local papers, hot off the press. Scanning his competitor's advertisements, Doc would turn right around and mark his own merchandise just below these prices.
Local merchants once came to Webb, asking him to stop this practice of price slashing and cooperate with them. His response? "You run your business, and I'll run mine."
Imagine walking into your local Wal-Mart and finding a special on underwear right next to the Brussels sprouts. A little, uh, weird? Well, this is what happened on Topsy Turvy Days at Webb's City. Customers came to expect 5-foot, 5-inch Doc Webb to jump suddenly on a counter and announce that bed sheets were now on sale for the low, low price of $2.69 -- at the soda fountain.
During one promotion, Webb sold 2,000 $1 bills for 95 cents apiece. The next day, he sold 2,500 more for 89 cents. On the third day, customers were offered the chance to sell their dollars back for $1.35 (serial numbers had been recorded). Not too many people took Webb up on his offer -- they'd already spent their dollars at the store.
You may have heard of those little traveling circuses he used to set up in the parking lot. In one of them a family was shot out of a cannon. "I was there the night Doc came out, all dressed and ready, and I can still remember him being shot across the parking lot and landing in that net," former employee Bill McIntyre once told the St. Petersburg Times.
Kids loved the Dancing Chicken. This coin-operated show featured live chickens, but don't worry, these pampered poultry never wound up being part of Wednesday's Chicken Day. Lines on these days, when chickens were sold two to a bag for 17 to 19 cents a pound, were often a block long.
In addition to the Dancing Chicken, if you peeked through tiny portholes into a tiny room, you could see treasure chests overflowing with jewels and, sitting very, very still, mermaids! St. Petersburg Times columnist Dick Bothwell once wrote, "Over these many years, the single largest attraction within Webb's City conglomerate has been the Mermaid Show -- the Real Live Mermaid Show -- the oldest practical trick in the town." Truth is, these were mannequins. A behind-the-scenes employee, speaking into a microphone, would patiently answer customers' questions about life as a mermaid -- and a drugstore one at that.
If chickens and mermaids weren't enough: "Watch your step as you leave the elevator, ladies and gentlemen. This is the third floor, where you'll find the baseball-playing duck and the kissing rabbit."
Yes, this really was "the World's Most Unusual Drugstore."
www.museumofhistoryonline.org/ -- Here on the St. Petersburg Museum of History's Web site you can take a peek at "Webb's City: A Community Remembers." This special exhibit runs through Jan. 20 at the museum. Come see the dancing chicken! Witness the wonders of the mermaid diorama! There's also a pretty cool movie about the history of Webb's City and St. Petersburg waaaay back when. The museum is at 335 Second Ave. N. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Adults $5; seniors $4; ages 7-12 $2; 6 and under free.
-- Information from Times files, Rick Baker's "Mangroves to Major League" and Gene M. Burnett's "Florida's Past: People and Events That Shaped the State (volume 2)" was used in this story.