The Narrative Arc

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THE NARRATIVE ARC

Why My Aunt Sold Her Business for a Dollar

An unscrupulous man forced her to become a businesswoman.

7 min readFeb 14, 2025

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A soda fountain like the ones in drug stores during the sixties. Contributed by Rick Lewis for free editorial use: Wikimedia Commons: Alamy Stock Photo

My aunt was an entrepreneur in the 1960's, when other women stayed home. But it wasn’t by choice. An unscrupulous man forced her into it.

The man was her husband’s business partner, and he owed her a share of their business after her husband died suddenly of a heart attack.

But he never honored the agreement. She didn’t get a cent and might have ended up destitute if she had not been smart, determined, and generous.

Instead of bowing to fate’s blows, she surprised everyone by opening her own business, a drug store directly across the street from the unscrupulous partner’s pharmacy.

If you were a betting person, you wouldn’t have bet on her store. It was barely wide enough for a desk, with walls painted lime green and crammed with shelves that my aunt promptly filled with medicine.

Her place was nothing like the spacious drug store across the street, with its soda fountain, vast selection of ice cream flavors, and shiny metal shelves stocked with makeup, hair products, and small gift items. That store offered a bonanza of goods compared to my aunt’s paltry inventory.

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The Narrative Arc
The Narrative Arc

Published in The Narrative Arc

Medium’s best creative nonfiction — memoirs and personal essays. Eclectic, nuanced, entertaining. Follow us, or join our writers’ collective.

Bebe Nicholson
Bebe Nicholson

Written by Bebe Nicholson

Writer, editor, publisher, journalist, author, columnist, former nonprofit director. bknicholson@att.net

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