Over the course of the last few years of artificial scarcity and misinformation around vaccines, I found myself a pharmacy that is not a mega corporation, nor is it affiliated with a health insurance company. When I call, an actual person answers the phone. They text me when my prescriptions are ready, and this year they even sent a note to my doctor on their own to request a refill of the one prescription I use regularly.

My pharmacy, Parkway Pharmacy, is on the first floor of an apartment building in a nice area of Philadelphia. Another business on the first floor of that building is a rehabilitation facility. There’s also a diner, where you can get a proper meal served by a tough, matter-of-fact waitress with bad hair, and a grocery store that is convenient, well stocked, and reasonable.

There’s a reason for all that convenience. Though the building is not officially a senior community, somehow almost everyone who lives there is over 60, so the pharmacy has a live-in clientele.

That isn’t quite enough to compete with the CVS a block away, even though the service at the CVS is beyond inadequate, because people automatically think of CVS these days when they think drugstore. The CVS corporation also owns Aetna. A machine answers the phone at CVS. The pharmacy employees in the back are overworked there, and no one answers your questions properly. They lose prescriptions. It’s foul. It’s rude.

So the owner of my pharmacy competes by providing good service.

I am doing my part to grow his clientele; my adult kid now uses it as well.

Yesterday, after the announcement that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was among the states that had found a workaround for the FDA’s appalling vaccine advisory, my pharmacy texted me that flu and COVID vaccines were available for walk-ins. I dropped everything and went over.

There were about five people already waiting to get their shots, because at my age, you hear “time’s chariot hurrying near.” It’s not true for all of us, but many of us are meticulous about getting health care, and until that monster in the Trump Administration succeeds in figuring out how to deny care to senior citizens, Medicare pays for a whole lot of things.

I’m a young 74, so even though my balance isn’t good and my knees and hip hurt, I didn’t let anyone give me their seat until it was almost my turn. We waited amicably while one by one, the nurse called us in, chatted in her little office, and gave us our shots. An elderly gentleman (well, a lot more elderly than I am) missed his turn because he was probably a little deaf and not very alert, and the pharmacy clerk made sure he went next.

I chatted with the nurse, she stuck me twice, and I went to the little grocery store across the courtyard and got my food.

An hour later, my adult kid walked over to get their shot, and was in and out in no time.

So if you live in Philadelphia, I recommend Parkway Pharmacy. It’s on Fairmount Avenue. Actual human beings work there. It’s clean. You can get your prescriptions, and you can also buy over-the-counter medicines, get a lottery ticket, and even pick up a gift or two.

Or find yourself a human pharmacy near you, if you can.