If you see me this week, be sure to admire my newest handcrafted bracelets. One is a strikingly patriotic red, white and blue rainbow loom fishtail design, the perfect Olympic wear. The other is crafted of clay beads centered around a watermelon sphere, totally a symbol of summer. This jewelry was painstakingly made by two preteen artisans and purchased at their campsite pop-up booths.

“Did you make this here, or did you plan this at home?” was my standard question.

They had the same answer, “Both!”

“Have you had many customers?”

“A few,” the first little girl said.

“Mostly grandmas,” replied the second in a tone that implied she thought I was a member of that group.

“Grandmas are the best, aren’t they?” I agreed.

“Yeah. They have to buy something for each grandchild, so they buy a lot.” She looked at me expectantly.

“Well, I don’t have grandchildren, but I will buy a bracelet.”

The little salesperson didn’t seem disappointed. After all, a small sale is still a sale.

The girls’ roadside tables were the campground equivalent of lemonade stands, a childhood pastime near and dear to my heart. While lemonade stands first appeared in New York City in the mid-1800s, they didn’t become the provenance of children until around 1918, when schooling became compulsory and summer vacation became part of the yearly schedule. Since then they’ve become every young entrepreneur’s dream. Books, TV shows, movies — lemonade stands are seemingly everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except backroads in Vermontville, where cars speed by at 55 mph, if they go by at all.

With this truth, my children never truly had the opportunity to have a concession of their own. We did try once, but only one customer came. This heartbreak made them (and me) acutely aware of every child’s stand and the emotional stakes involved. If a kid is selling something we are all suckers. The car will turn around, and we’ll even go miles out of the way to support their forays into capitalism. I completely understand the moms who advertise their kids’ stands. More than one Facebook post has compelled me to drive across town for a cup of sometimes awful lemonade. More than one neighborhood workout has left my girls scrambling into their vehicles to make good on their promises to purchase a child’s wares. Nothing is more heartbreaking than being all setup and ready to sell, only to lack customers. That’s why I now own two bracelets after a single bike loop around a local campground.

Sometimes these stops lead to unexpected results. Last summer our neighbor’s children had a table set up by the road, with a cooler sitting on top. Their sign was illegible, but Bill and I started scrambling around the cup holder for some loose change.

As he pulled the car up to their roadside stand, Bill asked, “How much for your lemonade?”

“Oh, we don’t have lemonade!” the oldest boy answered.

“Iced tea?” Bill tried.

“Nope!”

“What ‘cha got then?” Bill followed up, unable to think of another beverage.

“We’ve got … snakes!” the young P.T. Barnum proudly announced as he tipped the now-open container towards us.

Sure enough, they did. We donated and continued home, totally caught off guard but chuckling.

We never figured out what their sign said. So, I’m unsure if the neighborhood kids were attempting to raise money with a scaly peep show, if they thought they could sell the serpents, or if they just wanted to share their undulating captives.

This morning as I walked by, the cooler was once again sitting expectantly by the roadside stream. The kids weren’t around now, but I could hear them out back.

“Snakes!” I thought and smiled, but I didn’t lift the lid to check to see if my hunch was correct.