After the second world war a new type of business sprang up all over America. The Kool-Aid stand. This was a seasonal business run by kids trying to earn their own bubble gum money as soon as school let out for the summer.I ran a Kool-Aid stand in front of my own house one summer before I even entered school. Mom let me make the cherry Kool-Aid all by myself. After an hour or so with no customers, I spotted a man going down into a manhole on the corner and I hastened toward him with a paper cup of the refreshing summer kid’s beverage. But I was too late. He had disappeared into the subterranean world of public utilities. But that was fine with me. I’d simply wait until the unknown man came up for air and then I’d give him my best sales pitch.
My patience paid off. About five minutes later a man stuck his head out of the manhole. It was my grandfather, working for the highway department. Undeterred, I quickly explained to him the beneficial cooling effects of cherry Kool-Aid and, after he laughed, he produced a nickel. We made the exchange and he slugged down the red drink like a prospector in the desert, dying of thirst. Afterward, he made a face and told me it had “hit the spot”. Then his head was swallowed up again by the dark hole and I went back to my Kool-Aid stand.
After that, I was pretty hot myself, so I pilfered a small drink from my own stock and tasted it. I had forgotten to add the sugar. But, according to my one and only customer that day, my very first business had been an undisputed success.
Yuppies were the Young Upwardly-mobile Professionals in the 1980s and 1990s who basically used to be the hippies of the late 1960s. At some point in time, these incredibly shallow and restless folks decided to give up their pot and beads for cocaine and Rolexes.