Throwback Thursday Stories: Lemonade Stands
Welcome to another week of Throwback Thursday Stories. Each week we take a few minutes to tell the stories behind our old photos. It is fun and its a great way to document some of those stories that currently only exist in our memories.
Each late spring/early summer my mom would have a massive garage sale. I don’t remember any summers where they didn’t happen. It was a great learning experience for me as a kid. I learned the importance of decluttering, the value of my own money (we got to keep the money we earned) and how to negotiate.
While Mom would host the garage sale, my sister and I would have a lemonade stand. This is a photo of our very first lemonade stand in 1989. I’m in the yellow chair and Melissa is in the green chair.
You can’t read the sign, but I am sure it says Lemonade 25 cents.
I love so many things about the picture of me pouring the lemonade:
- You can see how carefully I am doing it. I love that my sister is helping by holding the glass.
- The orange Tupperware pitcher that we used for most of my childhood and that dixie cup dispenser, which was likely from the bathroom.
- My sister and I have our hair done and barrettes in. My mom was a hairdresser and we always had perfect hair.
- My bare feet. I have always preferred to have bare feet over wearing shoes.
- The people waiting patiently.
- The memory of those chairs – the scratchiness of the green and white one and the smooth plastic on the yellow one.
- The wood card table, which was probably my great-grandmother’s. (After my parents were married, they bought her old house from my grandparents. I think that is so cool that I lived in the same house that my great-grandparents lived in.)
It’s funny to me how the simplest pictures bring back a flood of memories. This lemonade stand picture did that for me because my mom simply wrote next to it, first lemonade stand.
First.
This picture shows the first of so many lemonade stands. What a treasure. I’m so thankful that my Mom, amidst the busyness of the garage sale, grabbed her small long slim black camera to take this photo.
And now, I never ever pass a lemonade stand without stopping, and I always give a little extra money. I remember that feeling. I remember the anticiaption when a car would pull up. Would they stop? And when they would give a dollar and say keep the change?! It was. the. best.
Did you have lemonade stands growing up? Do your kids do them now?
Can’t wait to read your throwback Thursday Stories today. Please be sure to use the hashtag #TBTstories on Twitter/Instagram.
So sweet! What a precious memory!
precious times <3 U
I also always stop at lemonade stands! What a sweet memory, and I love everything about your photos. 🙂
This is so fun. I didn’t have a lemonade stand, but I remember asking my grandma to help me set up a fortune teller stand (she laughed at me) and once my cousins and I tried to set up a drive-by plant museum. Surprisingly, no one stopped to see our collection of weeds!
Dying over the plant museum. Hilarious!
We had that same Tupperware set! Instant memories. My mom was a great fan of garage sales too, I believe we went to Six Flags Over Georgia one year with our proceeds!
I love old school tupperware.
I love the old lemonade stands. Even now, no matter what we are doing, if we drive by one, I make my husband stop to buy two glasses. I love young entrepreneurs!
Me too!
This is so great! We had the same pitcher:). And massive garage sales are such a Wisconsin thing aren’t they? I miss that — my brother and I often had a little lemonade or cookie stand at ours. One year I also sold friendship bracelets:)
My five year old just did her first lemonade stand a couple weeks ago — she’s been wanting to for ages and we finally went for it.
She had a blast! Neighbors saw her out there and came over and sent their kids over and a few people we didn’t know stopped by as they passed our house.
She was thrilled – she even had to send me back in to make another batch once;)
I miss Wisconsin garage sales! They are definitely not the same in the south. So fun about your daughter. I can’t wait for Elias and Adeline to do one someday.
This is one of THE coolest posts, pictures and personal story shares I have ever taken the time to REALLY read and enjoy and think back to my own similar event! This is such a great idea ( the Throwback Thursday Stories) and I hope that it is a keeper! Thanks for making this girls day!
Love this story! We had several lemonade stands growing up but my favorite story is when my younger brother and a neighbor had one. We lived at the end of a long street in the cul-de-sac so we didn’t get much traffic but that didn’t deter my brother! He saw an airplane flying overhead and grabbed his sign and pointed it to the sky — loved his childlike faith and innocence!
That’s so awesome!
Fun!
We didn’t ever have lemonade stands, but one time we set up a fruit stand. We picked a bunch of plums off our grandparents’ tree, put them in empty strawberry cartons and set up shop by the road. Unfortunately, they lived at the end of a dead end road with only 1 neighbor, so we didn’t sell anything. But it was fun anyway!
We didn’t have that big Tupperware pitcher (Tupperware is expensive! We used a glass one that had been purchased full of orange juice the first time, then filled with Tang ever after) BUT, I had a pitcher like that with my little kitchen. It was such a darling wee thing that held about 6 oz. and I used it all the time and dreamed of the day I’d have a big one of my own!