Bruce adopted my rule a few years ago: If a kid’s selling something, we’re buying it. Just on principle. We want to encourage and support kids who are willing to work to earn money.
We’re especially impressed by original ventures. I’m a sucker for bundled-up kids shivering in front of Raley’s or Safeway where they offer mistletoe packaged in Baggies tied with curling ribbon.
But nothing quite gets me as much as kids selling lemonade in Redding when it’s a triple-digit day. Maybe it reminds me of when my sisters and I sold lemonade to Judge Eaton in front of the Shasta County Courthouse. Actually, it was lemon Kool-Aid. Unsweetened. We missed that part of the directions that called for sugar.
Saturday as Bruce and I headed up the hill for home we found a lemonade stand off Placer Road. The sign-holder was a blond boy standing in full sun on the corner. He jumped and jiggled a large poster-board sign toward motorists. The sign said “Lemonade 50¢.” An arrow pointed to a neighborhood.
We passed the boy just about the time we saw his sign. I asked Bruce to turn the car around. He did. We followed the arrow to another lemonade sign. We pulled up in front of a house where two boys – older than the one on Placer Road – manned the lemonade stand. At first, one of the boys was on his back on the grass under a tree. He hopped up when he saw he had customers.
“We’re all out of regular lemonade,” said one boy. “All we have is raspberry.”
Raspberry lemonade. OK, sure.
We bought two Styrofoam cups. The boys thanked us. We thanked them and drove home.
The lemonade was pretty awful: warm, diluted and fairly sour.
But the memory of those three boys — red-faced and sweaty, working outside in the Redding heat to earn some money — that was sweet.
