(For example, for the letter A it was the 26th word on the list, for Z it was the 1st word on the list)
“Pop-Pop, tell us a story.”
He looked at his three grandchildren and smiled. “What story?”
They chimed in unison, “How you named your company!”
“Well, I was barely able to drive and I found this old car for sale really cheap. It was painted an ugly yellow and had rust and dents all over it, but it ran. Most of the time, anyway. I had been saving my money for a long time, starting when I was only eight.”
His youngest interrupted. “You and your sister had a lemonade stand. Right?”
He chuckled. “Yes we did. We made good money every summer by setting up near construction sites. When we got into high school, we started making lemonade all year and bottling it.”
This time it was his oldest that barged in. “But you had a special ingredient, didn’t you?”
“We did. Do you remember what it was?”
“Vanilla!” all three exclaimed.
“You’re right. A dash of vanilla extract in each pitcher added a bit of exotic taste. Many told us it was addictive. For years, we never let anyone know what our special ingredient was. Back to when I found the car. It was what we would call a ‘beater’ car but I loved it. I knew I needed to do something more than just bottle and sell lemonade so your great-aunt Shelley took over that business and I started a small taxi company with my one beat up yellow car.
Because I didn’t want people to know I only had one car, I named it the Lemon Cab Company in honor of both the car color and our childhood lemonade stand. In a couple of years I had several cars, all of them old yellow beaters. We became the ugly ducklings of the taxi business.”
“Pop-pop, can we have some lemonade now?”
“Sure thing.”
Thank you.