Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Many Layers to A Story

This story begins like a feel-good libertarian story of the year:

Two girls found the lemonade business sweeter than ever Wednesday, after the St. Louis Health Department shut their curbside stand the previous day.

Mim Murray, 10 and Marisa Miller-Stockie, 12, of St. Louis, have been selling lemonade together for three summers in their neighborhood north of Forest Park. The two friends hope to save enough to buy laptop computers before starting seventh grade in a few weeks. Last summer, they made more than $100.

But on Tuesday afternoon, a city Health Department inspector told the girls they lacked the proper business licenses and were selling unsafe ice cubes, the girls said. The girls were selling Country Time lemonade from a powder mix and store-bought ice cubes near the corner of Des Peres Avenue and Forest Park Parkway.

Yay! Laissez-faire! But wait, this is in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, so I am suspicious there must be some angle within it to turn my libertarian blood hot.

Oh, here it is:

A nearby resident, O.V. Carreathers, 48, of the 5900 block of Pershing Avenue, had complained about the stand on Friday to the city's Citizens Service Bureau. The girls took the day off on Monday, but the inspector tracked them down on Tuesday.

"I just didn't want them on my property," Carreathers said Wednesday. "I just didn't want them blocking my walkway."

Mim and Marisa said their stand had been on the grass between the rear of Carreathers' property and the parkway. They said Carreathers had threatened to spray them with a garden hose if they didn't leave.

"That's not the American way, dude," Mim said Wednesday.

Those damn kids are nothing nothing but squatters who seek to profit from using some capital owner's resources for free. Now that's a story the Post-Dispatch can trumpet. The Man takes it again! Yay, plucky pint-sized property rights usurpers!

Sounds like Mim has learned the American way, dude, and it's not her great-grandfather's American Way. Bleh. I think I am drinking too coffee, which heats my libertarian blood rather quickly.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:48 PM