Lemonade (for sale!)
Lemonade (for sale!)
Get your ICE COLD
Lemonade (for sale!)

First, we found plenty
hanging, just down the street
We’d reach, plucking deep
with tight eyes
tracing ornament string
taking “only what we need”
FREE, from neighbor’s tree
palming peel
braille, reading
over sweet, lumpy seams

kerplunk! jumps the bucket
handle, rattles the pail
at this rate, we’ll all be squeezing

The metal-latched
gate slams
“heeeyyy, we’re back!”
boards ripple, down-fence
lines
vibrate, between cans
little faces peek through gaps
crawl out, from under-flap
mighty spells
break, in mid-act
by bells, ringing
“Lemonade!”

They snap, toward home base
Yes, they’re parched and ravenous
looking for ice-cold pitcher
They’ll down a cup, or eight
then, make their escape
with no price in mind
eager to get back to play

Later, on hot days
they’ll learn how to make
what once had appeared
out of thin air, so magically

That took a lot of work
and we could get paid, for such things
I know!
We’ll set up a stand, on the corner
try our hand - no need
for business plans
You make the signs, and I’ll wave 'em in
how grand!

Well that worked, fabulously
and now, we’re gonna make it
a daily thing:
You, and I, and the tree

Days pass and
the time for play, passes with it
as the team grows
conjuring green from the veil
some doubt sows
its way in between

This has been great, but
what’s our brand statement, really?
Lemonade? It’s so common, expected…
What does it do
to change the World, at large?

Yes, exactly my thoughts, and
I’m starting to think:
this operation won't scale
past this single tree
The neighbor is getting suspicious
of our daily routine
and Dad keeps asking “where’s the sugar gone” lately

Plus, the kids down the way
say we’re just playing a game
That we aren’t actually a Real Business
and can’t call ourselves Entre-
Entre-pre-
whatever that’s called, anyway

True, we need to expand
think ahead, make bigger plans
Maybe launch a cryptogram
to fundraise, buy land
and patent Nama’s recipe

Trademark the design of the stand
and lock out the competition
you know they’re jealous
of what we built, with just our hands
I can't wait...one day
they’ll all look back and say
this was the day
the Lemonade Era began

Back of the Page

There has been a lot of talk about who is a Real Writer and who isn’t. What is a Real Business and what isn’t. Who is starting the next Era of Such-and-Such.

With this poem, I was reminded of what it was like to be a kid, learning about ways to exchange things for money. For me, it started with the Lemon Tree.

Somewhere along the way, people got the idea that things needed to be more complicated, grandiose, or important. But as trends and platforms rise and fade, and all the claims dissipate, is there really any business as straightforward and easy to support as the neighborhood lemonade stand? What pressure are we putting on ourselves when we take ten steps forward in scalability, profits, and expectation?

I remember as a teenager, a good friend and I discovered a setting in Windows 98 that would allow you to “Share” your internet connection. What a business - we thought! We could take the internet connection that our parents pay for, and charge others to use and connect to it. The idea didn’t go any farther than the amount of time it took for us to toy around with the settings, as the meteoric rise of excitement crashed into a wave of realist disappointment (this really isn’t a good idea). It was pulling on an impulse we had learned to develop, which was “see if something can be exploited or exchanged for money, get really excited, then try it out.”

Later, as a parent, I remember helping my kids start their first lemonade stand. As is usual with this type of thing, the first customers were family friends. A Saint of a neighbor, Carol, came racing by when she heard the news that’d we’d set up a stand, and bought almost everything available. Our kids were thrilled. It was very sweet (and reminds me of my first subscribers here on Substack!).

But as things go on, the urge to Market and Sell themselves kept growing. My oldest (9) decided they wanted to try selling their art online. At first I indulged them by helping them publish an anonymous website, and then I thought more about what this was doing to their sense of creation. What would it mean to make creating art as a 9 year old a commodity to sell online? After a sale of digital art to grandparents, we backed away from it, realizing we didn’t want to continue down this path or expand their presence online. But where was this desire to create an online business coming from, and why did I initially support and nurture it?

I don’t have the answers, and I am trying to figure this out myself, as I share my writing on Substack and offer Paid subscriptions. What I can say is that I am not ready to take myself too seriously, or try to gatekeep or compete with other writers on this platform. I think there is space for us all to figure out how to publish our creations, and decide what that means for us.

Maybe going back to your own Lemonade Stand (or equivalent) can offer you some insight, too…

Thanks for reading, and Nama, thanks for all the lemons. 🍋