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SALT LAKE CITY — My children saw a lemonade stand on the corner during the town parade. They both spotted it at about the same time and stared it down until we turned the corner to our house. Then the questions started.
Why were those kids out there? Did their mother make them do it? Who got to keep the money? Could they charge more if they wanted to? Could they sell anything they wanted, like raffle tickets or waffles?
Could they get school credit?
School credit for a lemonade stand? Let me just acknowledge that the Main Street my kids walk is not the one that I walked.
As a kid in Idaho, I sat at the side of a lonely dirt road selling lemonade with one or two pickup trucks passing by an hour. I sat there all day until I had a sunburn and had finished off two entire pitchers of lemonade and made not a dime.
- First, wash hands. Everyone.
- 3 cups freshly-squeezed lemon or lime juice (20 lemons or 25 limes)
- 2 cups super-fine sugar (We threw ours in the blender)
- 4 cups cold water
- 4 cups ice
- 2 lemons or limes to float around and look cool
- Into a large pitcher, strain the juice, mix it with sugar, and stir until the sugar dissolves. Add 4 cups cold water and stir again until well combined. Add ice to chill. Also add a few lemon or lime slices for coolness.
I learned the importance that day of location, location and sunscreen. And lids — to keep Idaho bugs out of the lemonade.
Who would have thought that my kids would find something as simple as a lemonade stand to be intriguing? Could it be that my 21st Century I-stuff-loving children could find benefit in the lemonade stand rite of passage from days of yore?
I threw out a few ideas to the kids. It all seemed to click with them when I suggested they could keep any of the money they made. They said, "sure," then translated my dad speech into modern language and did then did their own thing.
They made themselves a sign. "Lemonade," it read. "Twenty-five cents."
It said this in little pencil on a big-ish piece of cardboard. I didn’t want to influence their experience an awful lot, but this dad grabbed the sign by the horns. How would they learn the value of money if they didn’t make any? When I was through it read:
LEMONADE! FIFTY CENTS A GLASS — Put a kid through dental school!
They picked out the perfect place to set up shop — right in front of the house. Have I mentioned that we live in a cul-de-sac? They sold to our neighbors, to the FedEx lady, and to the sister-in-law of a guy that was staying with someone for the week.
The rest of the time my entrepreneurs were on their phones texting. I felt bad that two generations of Cheneys had blown the lessons of a lemonade stand.
The conversation at dinner — post-lemonade stand — was a bit of a surprise. The kids rattled off some good ideas — not necessarily what I had thought to teach:
• A bigger stand would get people's attention, and rather than a piece of cardboard, Dad would bring home a refrigerator box from work and paint it to look like a giant, happy, dancing lemon.
There are many things to be learned from setting up a lemonade stand: The value of money, trust and honesty, working together, responsibility, picking up after yourself, a good product honestly presented, supply and demand, market values — the list goes on
• If there was a long enough extension cord, music could be piped in. And maybe a yellow light could pulsate in the dark. They would text all their friends.
• No one wanted to man the stand all day and into the evening, so there would be a sign saying that the whole thing was on the honor system. One of my children would stop by every hour or so to collect money and restock.
• If mom cleaned the cups, then they could save on plastic supplies. Of course, they would have to move the table to a better location — like the mall, or the freeway entrance.
Real lessons
I rolled my eyes and passed the potatoes. Then came Dad's teaching moment, only they taught me.
Maybe, they said, they could set the stand up and have the kids down the road sell the lemonade, and those kids could keep the money since their family might have to move to a smaller house.
The simple days of bugs in ice-cold lemonade to teach the value of money were over that fast.
Life didn't permit another day of the lemonade stand, and my kids were off to the movies or to get an ice cream or wherever preteens spend their summer days.
There are many things to be learned from setting up a lemonade stand: The value of money, trust and honesty, working together, responsibility, picking up after yourself, a good product honestly presented, supply and demand, market values — the list goes on. I don't know if my kids learned any of those lessons.
I don't mind that they may have to learn all that some 21st-Century way, because I learned to appreciate my kids and to trust in their good sense.
My kids were kind, they wore sunblock and they refused no one a glass of the good stuff from a pitcher with a tight lid.
Davison Cheney writes the "Prodigal Dad" family humor column weekly for KSL.com. See his other writings at davisoncheneymegadad.blogspot.com and on Twitter @davisoncheney.
