Sour Lemons

By Don Ford

Peter and I decided to open up a lemonade stand between both of our homes. It was a quiet street so we would have to be creative. It is the same word my mom uses when she tells my dad to keep looking for work. He has been out of work for three months now and it hurts our income, because it's now cut in half. Peter's dad lost his job too and we got the idea from that. Mom is worried that we will not be able to stay in our house. Pete and I couldn't do much, but we could do something.

The first day we set up on our block, we also counted the cars. We made a giant white sign with a big yellow lemon painted on it. Plenty of folks beeped as they sped on by. I wanted to make another sign: "Beep, if you love lemonade! And stop if you Beeped. Well, not many took us up on our offer. I sent Peter to the corner, which was where the major highway intersected. He took another lemon sign with him. The sign read, "Get yers before we run out."

We were prepared to pull out all the stops and get out the sympathy flag, if sales fell any more. But telling people that their parents were out of work wasn't necessary. Sales numbers rose. This little tactic seemed to be working. Folks were pulling off the major highway to get their refreshing lemonade before the last of it expired.

The lemonade stand attracted the local media, and they just had to see what all of the excitement was about. To their surprise people were lined up for nearly a block to get what appeared to be some sort of patented drink they were serving. One reported exclaimed "This is ordinary lemonade, nothing more - nothing less. So why was every one being driven to take a drink? It wasn't the fountain of youth, and certainly not the nectar of the gods." After that statement, more curiosity seekers were showing up.

Without meaning to do it, the news crew and their presence only heightened the awareness that maybe this little nothing of a lemon stand produced more than ordinary lemonade. The boys enlisted the help of neighborhood kids in the preparation and the distribution of this mystery liquid. "I'd like to run a story in the paper, if I could," asked one news personality.

The two original young blooming entrepreneurs said yes and a business was born. The parents helped the boys build a more substantial stand on the lawn of one of the boys. Sales were brisk as more folks came to watch the stand being built and more stories were sweeping the newspapers in the community.

After being caught on tape, the local news was quickly replaced by regional news men and women. The little stand seemed to be getting blown all out of proportion as a county-wide recognition was spilling over into neighboring towns and villages. But no one just came to gawk and stare, they were there to buy this precious liquid. It had to be better than all other lemonade anywhere. And the public would claim it was the best they had ever had before.

Call it blind and dumb luck, but when the television crews started rolling in to cover this mammoth event, the boys weren't prepared for the onslaught. Grateful, but they just were starting to feel overwhelmed. Whatever this was, whatever it signaled in their lives, it certainly was a welcome sight for both sets of parents. This little lemon stunt put both families on the map. Calls were coming in from all over the United states, once the lemonade stand was shown on the news. It was mostly other kids asking how they could buy into a franchise.

One of the boys had a cool idea. "Let's call ourselves Sour Lemons" Why not, it seemed like they could do nothing wrong and business kept pouring in. So the two of them shook on it and the big sign went up on the largest boulevard in their town and the news media had a heyday with it. Not only were the dry and thirsty folks coming for the refreshment, it seemed that now we have a whole new group of curiosity seekers, wanting to know just how sour lemons would taste. But to no one's surprise it was still sweet and tasty lemonade: fresh squeezed of course.

A rumor then spread like wildfire among folks who had been to the stand on several occasions. "It's not just lemonade, its got a special ingredient in it." Now moms were calling in wanting the recipe. So our two boys accommodated them by compiling a recipe book for folks who wanted to make lemonade like theirs. Was it special? You bet it was. And was their a secret ingredient, there was now as both boys got their heads together and cooked up what they must add to make it even better.

The recipe called for two ounces of the secret ingredient. With each recipe book was a small packet that was labeled, special secret ingredient. Was it that secret? Was it that special. Again, you bet it was. Folks never questioned what it was, but some looked at the back of the packet that by law had to reveal what was in the package. It was labeled pure cane sugar. It was raw cane sugar that was colored and packaged up to look like a secret ingredient, and the towns people ate it up. What an ingenious scheme. A genius idea the would now net them not only the added recipe sales, but landed them a book deal worth countless thousands of dollars. When the news got done with these two boys and their story, both of their fathers were offered work by local businesses.

The book was called, what else, Sour Lemons. The sales rose to the top of the best seller charts. It was the nation's top book and it was the kids that made up most of the sales of the books. They screamed at their parents to get it. And in a flurry, the nation of youth were beating a path to the boys' doors. "Will there be a sequel? This was the question on everyone's lips. So the book, What Little Boys are Made of" was born. The first sentence started out like this: You thought snakes and snails and puppy dog tails was what boys were made of. Boy, do we got news for you. It turned out to be another best seller, beating out book one, which incidentally was at number two and holding for the fourth week in a row.

The rest of the story? Oh, it's still being told as hundreds of children across every state in the union are buying into the lemonade love affair that had by this time completely swept the United States and calls were now coming in from foreign countries asking for the recipe and the two books on Sour Lemons. They wanted them published in their own language. Did this change the two boys? Of course, but all for the better. It has also changed the neighborhood as two young girls opened their own stand next to the "Sour Lemons" stand. It is being called O-Juice, by a couple of enterprising young ladies calling themselves Sugar and Spice.

Author Notes

These are days when many find it difficult to keep their heads just above water. Sometimes just a simple idea can turn things around.