The Kool Aid stand...

I remember endless days manning (childing?) the kool-aid stand. We waited, like hawks, during the lean periods. Staring up the street, in each direction, hoping that someone would come along. Perhaps stealing a little cup of ice-cold kool-aid.

Then we'd see someone. Someone approaching.

Up to the stand: proper now, straight.

"Glass of kool-aid for Oxfam?"

Ernest children. Tireless children.

We raised thousands of dollars over the years. Some people left 20s or even 50s. It was a donation system, and you could even have a glass for a penny if you'd wished.

Mum would wash the styrofoam cups in the washing machine.

We had a large red cooler with a little plug drain and would drain the cooler into glasses, with our thumbs.

Susie got her picture in the local paper one year, wearing a tube top. I was too young to understand the significance of this, for marketing, but we did a bumper year that year.

We must have started up the kool aid stand in the early seventies (Bangladesh). The last campaign was around the boat people from Vietnam, at the end of the 70s and perhaps into the 80s. I guess we must have given it up when the youngest ones (Cass and I) finally became punks, around '80 or '81.

That was around the time we started with the racoons...