They are the street-corner entrepreneurs of boring summer days.
These staples of American commerce sprout up
in the late summer like tents on a campground. Little League baseball has run
its course. Summer camps are over. Swimming pools have turned dry with overuse.
Daytime television is – well, daytime television.
They are the street-corner entrepreneurs of boring summer days.
These staples of American commerce sprout up
in the late summer like tents on a campground. Little League baseball has run
its course. Summer camps are over. Swimming pools have turned dry with overuse.
Daytime television is – well, daytime television.
The children and their parents have used up every diversion from summertime
boredom. Except this one.
One suspects that the tradition travels generation to generation more through
desperate parents than industrious children. One can imagine a longsuffering
parent being pushed across the line of toleration by summers end. “If
you kids dont get outside, Im going to . . . ” The kids respond,
“There is nothing to do outside.” And they are probably right in these
concrete-bound, fence-divided holding pens called modern neighborhoods. “Go
over to Billys to play.” “His mother sent us over here.”
But whatever the source, the tradition remains alive.
The two young retailers have just about everything in place on the busy street
corner. The signs are as large as the poster boards allow. Scrawled as neatly
as possible, they proclaim, “Lemonade And Fruit Drink, ONLY $.25.”
The words are in multiple colors for emphasis and a splash of creativity. “And”
is underlined at least six times, with six different colors.
The fruit drink aspect would embolden the heart of any industrial theorist.
It reflects the evolution of competition. Yesterday, the kids who had the lemonade
stand on the corner one block south had only lemonade.
These young men even have a cooler for ice one suspects was pilfered from their
mothers refrigerators.
A television tray serves as the counter. A one-gallon jug of glistening lemonade
already sits atop the stand with eight-ounce Styrofoam cups standing at the
ready.
One of the tee-shirt-and-shorts-clad businessmen proudly walks toward the stand
with his contribution to the enterprise of a lemonade stand – a largemouth
gallon jug brimming full of red fruit punch. He proudly puts the stock on the
television tray with great finesse, as though he was putting the crowning touch
on the Eiffel Tower.
Then it happens.
As the business partners behold their store, one of the legs of the television
tray collapses and their entire stock of lemonade and fruit drink goes plunging
earthward. Although it has to seem like the slow motion of a disaster film to
them, it happens so fast there is nothing they can do.
One partner grabs for the fruit drink jug too late. His arms still outstretched
in the air, he looks at the other partner with an expression of stunned disbelief
bordering on horror.
The largemouth jugs hit the sidewalk and a tidal wave of red fruit drink washes
toward the street. The lemonade jug hits on its red lid that looks like it will
hold, just before it releases its contents on the boys bare feet.
Just like that, business disaster. Their promising business washes away on
the grass and concrete of a promising corner.
The industrial theorists would rather leave this part of this micro-clip of
American commerce out of the picture. But it is part of reality. As I watched
those two young businessmen lose their entire investment in a matter of a couple
of seconds, I thought about the multitudes of businessmen who have watched their
fortunes evaporate almost as quickly. This scene definitely adds weight to Jesus
clear statement about not seeking security in wealth or even hoped-for wealth.
An hour later, a drive by the street corner yields no sign of what was to be
a prosperous business –
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