last day of the lemonade stand

In the morning we had breakfast with with Renee, Lena and Maria to evaluate what had happened the last two weeks and to talk about the next steps. We decided to return in the fall. In the mean time, we will hire Ngani to be our studio assistant. She will start mid-September by doing some video interviews with people we have met and we will take it from there.

Back in Larimer around noon, we walked by  the jitney place on Paulson Ave. in order to do our “sightseeing Larimer tour” with them. The big, black metal fence gate was pulled shut, and the guy who had said that that was not a problem wasn’t there. From behind the dark room behind the gate a woman told us to return around 5pm.

We walked back on Paulson Ave. and visited Mrs. Jones, who was volunteering in the furniture warehouse again and brought her a small pot of roses. She told us a little bit about her German great grandfather who had been the first man in the state of Ohio,  who had married a black woman. Before we left Mrs.Jones gave us a big hug and we took another picture of her in front of the mural at the wall of the warehouse building.

At 2pm we set up the Lemonade stand for the last time. Nobody was across the street on the porch. Emma’s husband, the car repair guy from down the street had put two huge loudspeakers in the windows of his house and blasted some soul music. When we walked down to get our daily popsicle, Emma was nowhere in sight. Before we were even able to say Hello, her husband, who was talking to a younger woman, started blaming us (or the world?) for all kinds of things. Besides “white” and “shooting” and “gangs” it was hard to figure out what exactly he was referring to, because the music was so loud. After a while he finally asked a question, we knew the answer to:
“What do you want? What do you want?”
“My popsicle”
“What color?”
“Red, white and blue”
“What is Emma charging you for that?”
“25 Cents”
He disappeared into the house and returned in a better mood, with the popsicle in his hand.

Ngani came by around the lemonade stand at 3pm. We all squeezed under the sun umbrella and explained to her the idea with the video-project. She told us about her last art projects, her jobs and the places she volunteered. While we were talking a car stopped on the street and a woman came out and ordered three lemonades. It took us a while to prepare those, because we had a hard time to put the lids on the cups.
Somehow they were not the original ones and a little tight. We felt slightly embarrassed that after almost two weeks of being on the job, our procedure of crushing the ice, putting it into the cup, adding the lemonade, putting on the lid and inserting the straw was still bumpy. The woman was in no rush and waited patiently. When we were finally done, her son jumped out of the car and helped her to carry the lemonades to the car.

At 3:46 a man in a grey sweat suit bought a lemonade and we chatted a little bit. His name was Homer and he lived around the block. Once he was gone, Nghani asked, if we noticed how odd it is to walk around in a fleecy sweat suit when it’s 90 Degrees outside, which reminded us, that an hour earlier, a young men had been walking down on the other side of the street, wearing boots, jeans and a black winter coat. We had asked ourselves, if he worked at a refrigerated warehouse or at a slaughter house, or if there was enrolled in a government funded free home air conditioning program and just enjoyed the cold.
After Ngani was gone, not much more happened. We had sold five lemonades in three hours, the most business so far.
Once we had packed up we passed by the jitney garage again. No car was parked in front, the metal fence was closed and no one was inside. We would have to postpone our trip for next time, or ask Ngani to do it.
While we stepped into the Kingsley Center to use their restrooms one more time we were approached by Verna, who inquired about project. We had met Verna briefly at the Kingsley at an Urban Green Growth meeting the week before. We told her about the lemonade stand. She liked our approach and loved that the police had showed up the first day. “Take two black people and put them into a white neighborhood selling stuff, I bet they would have called the police too. So this is real.” She then invited us to visit her dance studio on the third floor, where we also met Felicia who teaches Yoga there. We hang out for another hour and talked and laughed, until Louis used the big nice dance floor to stage a dramatic belly down collapse. It was time to go.