When Life Gives You Lemonade Stands, You Get Yourself Evicted!

We have our very own neighborhood HOA monster who often thrills us with her unwanted interferences. From calling the police on neighborhood kids for setting up a lemonade stand to putting notes on everyone’s doors telling us that we “need” to seek her approval before having a garage/yardsale at our own homes because she doesn’t like a lot of cars parked on “her street” as they upset her dog and scare her children, or telling everyone to not allow their children to ride their bikes past her house, and trying to dictate what color Christmas lights we should put up, it has been never-ending entertainment. Usually, I laugh and ignore her. This last time she forced me to engage.

The family directly across from me is Hispanic, and they are some of the nicest, most thoughtful people that I have ever met. They have a son who is ten years old now, and for the last few years, he has helped many of us and our elderly neighbors with chores around our houses, and he never asks for any money. Of course, many of us give him money anyway, but if you know him, you know he doesn’t do these things for money. He does it because it makes him feel good to help people. He told me one time that he likes to help people and make them smile.

His family has lived in the neighborhood for many years, even before our dear HOA monster moved in and tried to take over. It seems like she has always had something against this boy. Another mean old man and woman in our neighborhood also don’t like him because of his ethnicity and have tried to cause him trouble before.

He and a couple of other neighborhood kids set up a lemonade stand in his front yard with the goal of raising money to donate to the local children’s hospital in the next town over that recently treated one of their friends from school for injuries from a farm accident. They have a nice stand set up that his father helped them build and a large painted sign saying that they are collecting money for the children’s hospital. Our neighborhood is in a rural area; we have no sidewalks, but the road is wide with room to pull off and stop. Many people ride by on their way to town and back. They are doing a good amount of business at their lemonade stand.

[HOA Monster] decides that he and his friends are intending to keep the money and not donate it at all. She calls the sheriff’s office and accuses these children of defrauding a charity. She also calls the local newspaper to announce this major fraud going on in our neighborhood. As I said, we live in a small town, so the newspaper actually sends someone out to see what’s going on, but not before the police show up.

When the deputies arrive, a few of us notice them right away as we do not see them much in our neighborhood. [HOA Monster] also sees them arrive and marches down her driveway holding her dog. I swear this Yorkie has the same haircut as her, but it looks better on the dog; the dog is also more well-behaved.

She starts yelling about how the kids are using the children’s hospital’s name to collect money to spend on themselves and how they should all be arrested. Also, people are stopping in cars and parking “on her street” and scaring her dog, who looks like he wants to get down and play with the kids.

After her tirade, the deputy turns and asks the kids for their side of the story, and that is when [HOA Monster] makes her first fatal error. She screams at the deputy:

HOA Monster: “I am the one who pays your salary. It’s your job to do as I say, not take the word of some border-jumping Mexicans!”

She really hadn’t noticed that the deputy is himself Hispanic. I have a hard time not laughing out loud as the deputy starts talking to my young neighbor in Spanish. The look on [HOA Monster]’s face is priceless. After talking with the young man, his friends, and his father, he is satisfied that they are, indeed, intending to donate the money.

But [HOA Monster] is not to be denied her justice against these children who have committed this vile offense on “her street” and insists:

HOA Monster: “They don’t have a permit to operate a business and should be written a ticket and forced to close down. Besides, no one asked me if it was okay to open a lemonade stand in my neighborhood.”

At this point, the deputies have had enough of her, and so have I.

Deputy: “There’s no law against having a roadside stand; no permit is needed. As long as your stand is on your property and far enough back from the road, it’s legal.”

We have farmers with roadside fruit and vegetable stands all over this county. I don’t know where [HOA Monster] is originally from, but it isn’t around here.

It has been about an hour since we have all been out in the street, and I ask her, loud enough for everyone to hear:

Me: “Where are your children while you are out here in the street?”

HOA Monster: *Snidely* “It’s really none of your business, but if you must know, my children are playing in my swimming pool in my back yard.”

Me: “So, while you are out here b****ing about someone else’s kids, you left two children under the age of six all alone in a swimming pool? Your little girl is around three years old, and you left her and her brother, who is around five, alone in a swimming pool?”

That makes both of the deputies take an immediate interest in her and she visibly shrinks; it’s like watching the air going out of a balloon. The lemonade stand is completely forgotten about and things shift to her.

Deputy: “We need to go to your house and make sure that your children are safe.”

That is exactly what they did. After making sure that her children were, indeed, okay, the deputies came back and asked several of us if she often leaves her children alone like that. I wanted to say that she did, but I told the truth and said that I didn’t know; others said the same thing.

I don’t know what happened with that, but a “for sale” sign went up in her front yard about three weeks later.

Because she had called the newspaper about this to make sure that everyone knew about her stopping this major criminal activity, there was a story about it in our local paper several days later making sure that her fame as a monster neighbor was well known.