The Summer Lemonade Stand – A Fruitless Endeavor

Posted: September 4, 2011 in Contributors, Culture

Remember when summer was a time to play baseball at the neighborhood field, swim in the nearest pool, or just goof around and relax. And then, there was also the neighborhood lemonade stand run by little kids who just wanted to make a buck for their baseball team, their football team, a church project, or just for themselves to prove that they could

Summer is almost over and I suppose I should forget about the lemonade stands that were shutdown by the “powers that be” this year. However, there are two that stand out in my mind. One that two little girls opened somewhere in southeast Georgia. They shut this one down because the kids didn’t have a business license. Since when does a child’s lemonade stand have to have a business license? Lemonade stands have been around for years without some pushy pundit coming around harassing and squelching the incentive of these little entrepreneurs, who might just grow up to be the next successful businessmen/women if left to their own devices.

The second one was shutdown, I heard, because the Health Department didn’t know what was in the lemonade. Huh? They didn’t know what was in the lemonade? As I recall, the recipe is merely water, lemon juice, and sugar. Oh, I guess you could ask for unsweetened lemonade – that is – if you don’t mind if your mouth puckers up, but most normal people….oh never mind… Did anyone ever get sick off of homemade lemonade? If they did, I never heard about it. Were our constitutions stronger “back in the day” than they are now? I doubt it! Or, are we just becoming a nation of wimps and wussies, who can’t sustain ourselves without the help of the government, local, state, or federal, telling us how to do it?

What’s wrong with this country these days? A child can’t be a child anymore without adhering to adult laws?

My family was in the ice cream business. My next door neighbor was my best friend. We spent one whole morning making an ice cream stand out of three discarded doors with a plank on top to display the “wares”, and make change. The plant was only three blocks from our house, so my friend and I took our wagon and walked down to the plant. They made the ice cream in the back of the building and the retail store was in front. After okaying it with my father, we took said wagon to the back, and the guys, who made the ice cream, loaded small individual cups of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream in dry ice, so they wouldn’t melt, and then we walked home to our stand and sold it. As well as I can remember, no policeman ever came around to arrest us.

For cryin’ out loud, please give the little kids a break!!!

  • Mark C.

    I always thought lemonade stands were big losers. Has anyone evermade a boatload of money for all that time and effort? NO! Mowing lawns and paper routes were much more lucrative uses of your time.

  • Randy

    Excellent article, Nancye. It doesn’t seem like that many years ago frineds in my neighborhood sold lemonade. At some point between the 1970′s and today, common sense deserted us. To further complicate matters, this administration’s heavy handed regulatory agenda has virtually sucked the life out of anyone who ever dreamed of starting a small business.

    I agree- give the kids a break!

  • Iklwa

    If you let the little shysters get away with unbridled capitalism when they are young, then they will just grow up to be greedy capitalist pig shysters when they get bigger.

    In 1975 there was a movie starring James Caan entitled “Roller Ball” wherein folks were allowed to participate in a violent sport where winners were provided all the luxuries of life…as long as the government allowed. If you became too successful, you were “eliminated”.

    What we see here is government training young minds to the idea that they as individuals are powerless to succeed without the blessings of government and adult government employees with too much time on their hands (read: bloated employment roles) and no common sense.

    A wise man once said “The most frightening words in the English language are, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

  • Steve

    The heck with the little kids, give us ALL a break! Message to government: Get the heck out of ALL our lives!!! If government has run out of meaningful things to do FOR us to the point that it has to resort to doing things TO us and our little kids in order to justify its miserable job, then it’s time for government to step back – WAY back – and just get over itself. We’re tired of being over-regulated to the extent that we are.