As few people know, a child's lemonade stand in most places is a de facto criminal activity. They are unlicensed, uninspected and generally pay no taxes.
It's also a pretty good way of getting a halfway decent criminal education, too.
Most people think a lemonade stand's costs are just lemons, sugar and water but there's a lot more to it than that.
One of the first things I discovered is that a polce discount pays big dividends. It tends to get a lot of people off your back. Alice Kravitz was one. She used to call the police on me all the time saying I wasn't inspected by the Board of Health. The police discount more than paid for itself because when they dispatched a policeman to answer her complaint they'd run the siren for a few seconds a few blocks away. The table was on wheels and I't run it into the garage and lower the door.
The police, who knew a good thing on half priced lemonade would look around a bit, walk around the car, scratch their heads and leave. Later on one of them told Alice not to call the station anymore and threatened to give her a summons for giving a false report.
Then there were bullies to deal with and the protection racket was into business. A guy a couple of years older than me named Mike Fenster trashed the stand a couple of times and said it was gonna cost me if I didn't want it trashed again. Fenster wanted 50 cents a week to leave me alone. A buck to a couple of Junior High kids got both of Fenster's legs broken. In the long run it was a lot cheaper to pay the dollar once.
After Fenster's legs healed a few months later I approached him and put him on the pad. Alice Kravatz was on the warpath again and had figured out a way to sidestep the police. She went straight to the department of health who notified the police who would give me a siren warning and I'd push the stand back into the garage.
That's when Fenster earned his keep. I went on a weekend to the Cape with my parents and Fenster sneaked into Alice's yard and painted her beloved rock garden a combination of Dutch Boy white and Chinese red. He mixed the two and the rock garden was a sickly pallor of pink.
Alice immediately blamed me and went straight to the department and swore out a warrant which didn't get very far because I was in Cape Cod when the dastardly deed occurred. Alice stormed up to the lemonade stand screeching at me and threatening to have me jailed.
I looked at her and told her if I had any more problems she was going to find out that there was a lot more paint where the pink in her garden came from. She stormed off and when the police questioned my parents, my dad came up with indisputable proof I had been in Cape Cod the night of the incident. I then slipped a grateful Fenster another two bits.
The police, who were pretty good customers thanks to the discount then handed Alice Kravitz a summons and the magistrate fined her $20 for issuing a false report. Between that and the possibility of another midnight paint job Alice got off of my back.
By now the lemonade business was taking good care of itself and I expanded into the Friday Afternoon beer business. I wasn't selling beer to minors but word went out among the neighborhood dads that they could get a cold one for the road at Piccolo's Lemonade.
Those old WW2 guys loved a Friday afternoon beer and had Old School integrity. As a kid I could SELL them a beer just so long as I wasn't drinking one undeage. At that time the old WW2 guys figured under 16 or so was too young for beer. I was about ten at the time.
Friday afternoon business boomed. I made far more selling beer than lemonade. Lemonade broke even and became a front.
The local police knew I wasn't selling to minors and a couple of them would swing by Friday after shift and they'd get one in a bag for half off to drink on the ride home. Cops couldn't be seen drinking in public hence the bag. An extra quarter would get them a pack of Luckies, too.
Lucky Strike cigarettes were running about $1.75 a carton back then and sold in the machines for a quarter but had two pennies in the cellophane as change. They were 23 cents a pack. I didn't give change and I could turn a carton for $2.50 and come out 75 cents ahead. It wasn't too bad. In fact Ernie Colesto who ran a small market offered to sell me Luckies for $1.50 a carton because he knew I wouldn't smoke them myself. I made a buck a carton! Big money!
I adored Ernie Colestro. He was an Italian immigrant that got to the States in the 30s and enlisted after Pearl Harbor. He griped about haing gotten sand stuck in his typewriter and Utah Beach. Ernie wasn't writing company reports. He was a radio operator and used a typewriter to copy Morse Code with and griped that he had to copy his messages in pencil. He was a real character.
His face was a mess thanks to a shell addressed 'to whom it may concern'. He was one of the giants on whose shoulders I walked on as a kid.
Like a lot of the WW2 guys he was somewhat of an honest man with serious integrity. Ernie was dishonest as hell but had some very serious integrity in his dishonesty as did most WW2 veterans. They were men with principles.
He would gladly sell me Luckies at $1.50 a carton all day long because he knew I was reselling them to adults. Still, he would not sell me a single pack of Camels because he knew I smoked them and he thought that selling cigarettes to youngsters was bad juju.
One afternoon Larry Thompkins came around and demanded 25 cents not to knock my stand over. Mike Fenster, now on my payroll was hanging around. He was now on my side because he didn't want his legs broken again. I looked at Fenster.
"Mike," I said. "Give this man about 50 cents worth of hurt and flipped him a pair of quarters."
Mike tagged him and split his nose open like a ripe tomato and Larry ran off bleeding like a stuck pig. Mike ran after him shouting he had only earned a quarter and wanted the whole four bits. Larry got caught and got hammered. Larry avoided me until his dying day. He even called the 40 year High School reunion committee and begged off when he heard I was coming.
Ten minutes later a police car swung by. It was Officer Davis. The kids called him ' Officer Davy' to his face which he kind of liked. Officer Davy asked me what had happened. I told him the truth and Fenster cringed. I knew Fenster was in no trouble what I spoke up. Fenster had to earn a living, too.
Davy was a smart cop and I knew it. He got out of his car and slapped his nightstick into the palm of his hand and gave us kids an evil look.
"Pic, if anyone tries to shake you down for protection money you call ME! I'll teach them what hurt really is!" he said. The look on his face told me he was going to put whoever it was in the hospital or maybe even the morgue.
Looking back on things I now realize that Davy would have smacked the perpetrator in the ass a couple times with his nightstick, put the fear of God into him and that would have ended it.
He turned to Mike and said he didn't want to take money from him but he didn't want to see Mike get into trouble, either. He also winked at Karen Angelico who was there for a glass of lemonade. We all knew Karen was a blabbermouth so word would go out. I'd never have to face a demand for protection money again. I flipped Officer Davy a pack of Luckies and told him to swing by Friday after shift. He did. I tossed him a beer in a bag that ended that.
Anyway, that is how I came to embark on a life of crime with my childhood lemonade stand. It proved to be a wonderful education and kept me from having to take out a college loan.
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