Do your stuff

By Amy

I was waiting for the No. 6 bus at the stop on MLK and Fargo on a terribly hot afternoon, one of those glaring days when the sun lit up every crevice of the boulevard, exposing dried up grass and weeds and cigarette butts in the patches of dirt that escaped being covered with concrete. Things were hopping: Cars whooshed past me, adding to the gritty, heavy aroma of exhaust hanging in the air, and workmen were pulling their trucks into the parking lot for a lunch break at the Popeyes chicken across the street.

 

About a block away from my stop sits Reggie's barbershop. Reggie's building displays one of my favorite neighborhood works of art on its northern wall: a painting of a bespectacled barber and his young client, both smiling a little too broadly. In the left lower corner of the mural, there's a blue ghostlike figure that never fails to fascinate me. What's it doing there? Are the men wearing happy faces to conceal their fear of the blue specter? What were the intentions of the mysterious artist "Lissette"?

 

In front of Reggie's some children had set up a table and chairs—a lemonade or Kool-Aid stand, I assumed. I could tell from afar that they were young kids by the way they couldn't sit still—popping up and down out of their chairs and bopping to and fro around the table like ants near a hole to their colony. The kids reminded me of my 5-year-old nephew, Tavish, who on Thanksgiving, wearing pajama bottoms and a towel fastened around his neck like a superhero cape, ran about 60 laps around the first floor of my house—through the dining room, living room, front entryway, kitchen, dining room, over and over—while Beck's CD "Guero" played. Sometimes when he passed us, he would tilt his skinny white shoulders in a sly little dance move in time to the beat. My brother and I, creaky and weary from L-tryptophan, aging and the necessity of having to work long hours for those things that were freely and happily provided to us when we were small, wished aloud that we could harness about one-fourth of his energy for ourselves.

 

The bus wasn't coming anytime soon, so I started to walk the block toward the stand. I don't have children, and for me, happening upon one of these beverage rackets, designated by their construction-paper signs written in shaky childish block letters, can be as rare as seeing a bear in the woods. But following this summer's trend among the preschool set, even Tavish had put on a lemonade and cookie stand at his home near Seattle. Over the phone, I asked him about his sales pitch. "I told them you can have some strawberry lemonade and cookies," Tavish explained, "but first you have to give me the money." He ended up raking in the bucks. Sometimes being direct pays off.

 

As I approached, I saw that three little boys manned the stand on the sidewalk in front of Reggie's. Except these kids weren't selling mere lemonade—no—they had a snow cone machine, a clear plastic box filled with ice of the rare consistency and texture to hold its shape when served in paper cones, which these tiny entrepreneurs also had in supply, along with paper cups.

 

"You want a slushie?" a flirty little boy in French braids asked me. "How much?" I asked. "50 cents . . . I mean a dollar," he said, grinning. "You mean a dollar for two slushies," I said, citing the price advertised on their sign. 

"What flavor do you want?" all the boys asked me, talking over one another. "We have cotton candy, cherry and blueberry." And indeed, they had professional quality bottles of syrup, the kind found at ballpark concession stands—not anything so lowly as fruit juice or Kool-Aid or things their parents could buy at a regular grocery store.

 

I chose cherry flavor and the boys set to business. As I watched them scramble around the table, it slowly dawned on me that each boy had a designated chore: The charmer in braids was the salesman, the boy at the machine filled the cups with ice and provided the straws, and the third kid, who had waves and curlicues shaved into his close-clipped hair at the temples—probably the son or grandson of Reggie—was in charge of flavor.

 

I chose a paper cup, figuring it would be easier to smuggle on the bus than a cone, and after a loud and long discussion and negotiation, I went with a straw with a spoon built into the end instead of their other model, a spoonless straw that bent near the top.

 

After Mr. Ice packed my cup to maximum capacity, he handed it off to the boy with the designer haircut.

 

"All right Syrup Man, do your stuff!" the salesman shouted as he performed a crazy bendy-legged, stretchy dance. Syrup Man drowned the ice in red cherry syrup, pouring it on so heavily that he elicited a loud "Whoa!" from his partners. I gave the salesman two quarters, and they all thanked me for my business.

 

That cherry syrup was mighty powerful stuff—my tongue remained red and the back of my mouth tasted like Robitussin for the rest of the day—not even Extra Polar Ice mint gum or strong coffee could cloak it. Maybe I should have chosen cotton candy instead. Funny how tastes change over time. When I was those boys' age, while walking home from Beaumont kindergarten, I'd buy bubblegum ice cream from Rose's on Fremont, not caring if it stained my mouth a bright blue. Now I'd prefer an organic green tea gelato drizzled with raspberry coulis, please.