This isn’t your grandpa’s pharmacy. Or is it?

Neon signs glow pink. A jukebox plays 1960s pop music. Customers eat at a marble counter.

Griffith & Feil Drug looks more like a diner than a Walgreens. But a hundred years ago, many pharmacies looked like this.

This store in Kenova, West Virginia, features a soda fountain. Don’t picture a modern soda machine with buttons for Pepsi and Mountain Dew. Imagine gleaming metal faucets and bottles of flavoring. A worker called a “soda jerk” pulls a shiny handle. Soda water pours into a glass. The soda jerk mixes up your bubbly beverage.

What will you try? Watermelon soda? Peanut butter soda?

In the 1800s, pharmacists sold these “phosphate drinks” as medicine. Before long, the sodas became a popular treat.

Want something cold and sweet on a summer day? Today, you might buy ice cream. In the 1930s, kids went to the drugstore. Soda fountains appeared in smalltown pharmacies across America.

“It was a place where you had an experience,” says pharmacy owner Ric Griffith.

You probably won’t find a soda fountain at your local pharmacy. Most small drugstores couldn’t compete with chains such as CVS and Walgreens. Fast food drive-throughs wooed away hungry customers.

But places like Griffith & Feil Drug keep tradition alive.

Mr. Griffith remembers a grandfather and granddaughter who visited his store. The grandfather told stories from his childhood. As a boy, he sat in those same booths. He would stop by after school and order cherry Coke.

“The look on his granddaughter’s face was wonderful,” says Mr. Griffith. “She’d never thought of her grandfather as ever having been young. He was always her grandfather.”

Fast food might be quick and cheap. But a good time with friends and family? That’s priceless.

Why? Cheaper and quicker isn’t always better. Sometimes older, slower things help us connect with other people.