This photo reminds me that every summer since lemons were invented, kids have been selling lemonade from roadside stands.

Lily and Jolie Avery look like they are doing a brisk business in last week’s scorching temperatures, and I hope they made a bundle.

My old pal Ronnie Elmore and I took such notions during the summers of the late 1950s, setting up streetside on Eureka where I grew up and where traffic was brisk but not so brisk as today where to slow down and stop long enough to buy a glass of lemonade would invite being rear-ended.

During one of those summers  of long ago, we once had a windfall when our entrepreneurial efforts coincided with the construction project to build curbs and gutters along Eureka Street.
Every morning Mr. Rufus Burras and a crew would labor under the hot sun, working up a thirst that our lemonade promised to slake. I don’t remember whether we sold if for a penny or a nickel or what. Couldn’t have been much.

Other summers were slower, so we adopted a different business model. Ronnie had two older brothers, Bill and Jim, who had their own cars and incomes. Sooner or later their errands would bring them driving by on Eureka Street. They would always stop.
 
With Bill and Jim, it didn’t matter what we charged for a glass of lemonade, they’d just give us all the change in their pockets. Every time. Sometimes a dollar or more.

Each day we’d set up and wait. Almost invariably, one brother would drive by and not long afterwards, here would come the other. Once the second brother had bought his glass of lemonade and driven away, we’d close shop.

By then, we’d already made more with two purchases than we’d make during the whole rest of the day combined.

Life was good. So were big brothers. Been looking for dollars that easy ever since!

(Editor’s note: Shortly after these lines were written, we received word that Ronnie Elmore had died peacefully in his sleep, Monday, July 9. An obituary will published with Friday’s print and online edition.)