The Snow Cone Lady can cause she mixes it with love and makes the world taste good

So in the town I live in, we have this person called the Snow Cone Lady, and she's kind of a big deal. Everyone knows the Snow Cone Lady (unless you're not from here, like me, and didn't find out about this delicious goodness until the eleventh grade). I think her real name is Mary, but everyone knows her as the Snow Cone Lady. She's got kids in college and in high school. She's got hundreds of flavors of snow cones, and they're ridiculously low priced: a small snow cone costs $1.25 and a large costs $1.50. She used to operate out of a wooden little shack behind this gas station/country store/diner thing, but now she's upgraded to a little brick building a few blocks down the road. The line and sitting area is still outdoors, the snow cones cost twenty-five cents more, and the parking lot is still a rocky dirt field, but she's got to make over half a million dollars a summer, easy. I'm pretty sure she's managed to put some of her kids through college based on snow cone money alone. There is always a line at least twenty people deep outside of the window you order from, and she's always quick with the orders. She's open weekdays from 3-10 and weekends from 2-10, unless there's a storm/rain or it's a holiday. She's a town tradition and has been around since the 1980s. Summer starts when she opens for the season and ends when she closes.

This summer, because I started with practically no money, I've only been able to go to the Snow Cone Lady twice. Today, I managed to scrounge up $1.50, with every intention of buying a large strawberry snow cone to reward myself for not killing any kids during morning practice, and to put me in a god mood before the evening practices. I left my house early so that I could go to my dad's, let his dogs out, and make it to the Snow Cone Lady with enough time to get to the pool by 6:30. I sped all the way through a 30 mph zone and passed 2 cops all in order to get there in time.

And then I turned down the street her brick shack was located on.

The parking field was conspicuously empty.

The pop-up tents she used for shade were missing.

There. Was. No. Line.

The warning signs were all there, but I ignored them for the futile hope that maybe, just maybe, she was open. I mean, there weren't a superfluous amount of ominous rain-bearing clouds around. It wasn't a holiday. It was 6:15 PM on a Tuesday. She had to be open.

I drove past the building.

The green door that covered the window was closed, and I knew then, my fears were confirmed.

The Snow Cone Lady was closed.

Dejected, I turned around and drove off to the pool.

I got pissed during my first swim group (granted, I did get all of the annoying eight year olds), and I wound up making two of the middle schoolers swim a 200 fly.

It was not a good night.