Making a Stand

Making a Stand
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday July 18, 2015

You rarely see a shopkeeper in a top hat these days. Or a roadside lemonade stand on a glacial Sunday afternoon.

Had the top hat been made of felted beaver fur, it might have lent its owner an entrepreneurial air. But this topper was made of pink plastic and glitter and made its owner look like a circus performer. It was rammed onto the head of my five-year-old, who had set up shop under a naked plane tree. Her cardboard sign read: Leminhade $10.

“Shall we move the dot and make it $1.0?” I suggested. “The mining boom’s over, you know.”

“No,” she said firmly, customising her paper cup tower. “But you can do the pouring.”

I remembered the last time I ran a lemonade stand. I was ten and a dead rat sent me broke.

It had been a broiling summer and we’d moved to a new suburb. The neighbourhood kids were mostly boys who roamed in a pack. I crossed the street to avoid them but then eyed them jealously as they huddled outside Mrs Fong’s milk bar dividing a lolly bag between them.

Mrs Fong had a knack for siphoning my pocket money into her Atari video game machine. She’d sandwiched her console between her bread rack and her drinks fridge. An upturned milk crate masqueraded as a stool. Its plexus of hard plastic bit into the backs of my thighs. Sitting on that crate for ten minutes left my bottom scored like pork crackling.

Mrs Fong wasn’t the friendliest of deli owners but she knew that kids who had pocket money needed to spend it. Her Atari offered only the enticing frustrations of Space Invaders. If my stash of 20-cent pieces lasted longer than she liked, she’d clap her hands as if to say “Enough!” and yank out the power cable.

One slow weekend, Mum suggested a lemonade stand might make me some friends. She mixed a jug of Cottee’s lemon cordial and I scooted round to Mrs Fong’s. I steered myself away from her Atari and spent my week’s pocket money on her lollies instead.

Lugging Mum’s rickety card table down our driveway, I set up my stall by the kerb and re-branded Mrs Fong’s shop as my own. Business was slow until several specks appeared on the crest of our hill and a bunch of kids came charging down the footpath.

Three of them, I noted, were boys from the neighbourhood gang, but customers were customers. Besides, one boy was begrudgingly towing a sister about my age. I tried to sound cool as the boys procrastinated, fingering the coins in their pockets.

“The lollies are half the price of Mrs Fong’s,” I lied.

“As if” said the tallest boy.

Two loud cracks split the air. I spun around to see my step-father at the top of the driveway. He had the stock of his air rifle jammed into his shoulder, the muzzle aimed at the ivy to our left, festooning our side fence.

“Crack!”

He fired off a third shot. We kids were paralysed by fear and indecision.

My step-father leant his gun against a drainpipe, strode over to the fence and bent to retrieve something from the garden bed. He straightened, shouted something I couldn’t hear and triumphantly held up a small package he appeared to be holding by its string.

Grinning like a Mississippi Republican, he was heading our way when I realised he was dangling a dead rat by its scaly tail.

It took a moment for this gruesome sight to register. When it did, the sister screamed. Her brother panicked and all five of my customers bolted.

“I thought the boys might like to see it,” called my step-father, perplexed by all the hysterics.

“Don’t be ridicuIous,” said Mum. “You scared the daylights out of them.”

On cue, I burst into tears.

When the rat corpse had been disposed of, and I’d recovered from the murderous interruption to trading, I resumed my post with my cardboard sign.

The street remained deserted. After an hour, Mum gently suggested I come inside. I spent the last weeks of the holidays riding solo to the local pool and trying to impress on Mrs Fong the need for crate cushions.

That was then.

I was snapped out of my 1980s reverie by the arrival of Jack and Finny, my five-year-old’s favourite playmates, both desperate to play shop with her.

Finny made a grab for her tissue-box till and Jack began unstacking her cup tower. “No-one’s allowed on my side of the table,” my youngster wailed, flinging her top hat to the ground and stomping up the street.

Finny and Jack poured themselves some lemonade, clearly delighted with their takeover.

“You two are in charge while I sort her out,” I called, breaking into a jog. “But make sure you leave me your ABNs!”