One summer a long, long time ago a traveling carnival came to Maysville, Oklahoma. Since it was late summer, Maysville was probably their last stop for the year. When the carnival left town, the lady (and her son) who sold snow-cones at the carnival stayed behind a couple of weeks and asked permission to set up their snow-cone “stand” on the sidewalk outside my grandad’s store. Since the weather was still warm, they did a pretty good business.
I was about 12 years old at the time and I talked to the “snow-cone people” a lot because I spent a fair amount of time hanging around my grandad’s store — I bagged groceries there on a part time basis.
So when the snow-cone people announced they would be leaving, I asked if I could buy their snow-cone machine. They said they’d sell me everything — including the supplies and the “stand” (which was not much more than packing crates nailed together.) for $125. My Dad suggested that I offer them $100 for the whole package. (Remember, $100 was a lot of money back in the 1950s time frame.) Turns out that they accepted my offer, but there was a problem — I didn’t have $100. I had maybe $20…. and of course my Dad did the right thing by telling me that it was my responsibility to come up with the money. He suggested that I go to the bank and see if I could get a loan. I don’t remember for sure, but I think the bank agreed to the loan if my dad would co-sign. But my grandmother (Williamson) came through for me. She said she’d loan me the money with no interest, but I had to pay it back in a reasonable amount of time.
Well, I set up my snow-cone business right in front of my granddad’s store and business boomed. I only had a month or six weeks (maybe 2 months maximum) before it would be too cold for snow-cones. It turned out that I was either a very good businessman or very lucky, because I was able to pay my grandmother back in full and bank enough money to get the business started the following summer before the weather got bad.
Over the winter, I made arrangements to rent a space for my snow-cone stand and my grandad (Archer) built a real “stand” or building that had a door, a floor, a customer counter, shelves and was wired for electricity. There was a shoe repair shop located on Main Street that had a vacant lot right next to it. I rented the space to set my stand and Mr. Beck (the shoe shop owner) agreed that I could tap into his electricity — for a fee — that was added to my monthly rent. For the next two or three years, the business did well and I made a fairly good profit. I was written up in the Maysville News newspaper a couple of times for being the youngest businessman in town. I know it wasn’t the Washington Post, but hey, it was a real newspaper that was published every week.
When school started in the fall and before it was out for the summer, my (great) aunt ran the business for me during school hours.
I operated the business until the last two or three years of high school. By that time a local drug store had noticed the popularity of snow-cones and put a machine in their store. That competition (they were able to operate it year-round) and probably my deteriorating interest led to closing the business and pursuing other interests through high school.
Once again, no particular point to this — just something I happened to remember a few days ago, when the subject of summer jobs for kids came up….
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