Making lemons into lemonade
BY ALEX CANTATORE
Staff Reporter
As a group of Turlock High School cross country athletes ran down Canal Drive during their Monday afternoon practice, a wayward look down Edwards Avenue led the runners to see what, at first glance, appeared to be no more than a mirage. Sitting there, an oasis in the unbearable heat, stood a lemonade stand and 5-year old Logan Prestage.
When practice was done for the day, eight students made the short trip back to the stand where, for just 50 cents, Logan offered the runners a glass of the finest lemonade money could buy. Those first eight were hooked, not just by the allure of an ice-cold concoction after a four-mile run, but also by Logan’s contagious excitement.
“The little boy was so enthusiastic we had to come back,” said Cody Huntington, one of the first THS students to discover Logan’s stand.
And come back they did. On Tuesday, Huntington and his friends rounded up more than 20 Bulldogs to enjoy a glass of lemonade.
When the second day was even more fun than the first, Huntington approached coaches Mike Brown and JoAnn Davison about the possibility of getting the entire cross country team to visit Logan’s lemonade stand. With the coaches’ blessing, all 78 members paid Logan a visit on Wednesday, and the student’s exhilaration was unmistakable amidst the chaos.
“I was thinking about it all day,” Huntington said. “Forget math, I was thinking about this.”
“In the past two days, I’ve spent 10 bucks!” said one runner.
“It’s so good, I had four already,” said another.
The THS cross country team, voted most spirited in their section last season, attacked the jugs of lemonade when they weren’t busy laughing. When all was said and done, Logan had made more than $150 from his lemonade sales in less than three days, thanks to the cross country team’s patronage.
“When I had a lemonade stand as a kid, I only made 75 cents,” Huntington said. “I must’ve been pretty ugly when I was little.”
Selling the lemonade was Logan’s own idea according to his mother, Jennifer Bends. The family has been planning a trip to Disneyland, and Logan wanted to earn his own way, all $200 of it.
“He’s going to love Disneyland,” Bends said. “Even more because he earned it.”
Logan’s well ahead of schedule to meet his goal of $200 by the time his family travels to Anaheim next month, but the cross country team hopes he keeps selling lemonade-at least until training is through.
“As long as he’s still here, we’ll come every day,” Huntington said as Bulldogs posed for cell phone pictures with Logan and drank glass after glass of lemonade.
Everyone was having so much fun on Wednesday that no one stopped to ask what was so special about this little lemonade stand until Amanda Garcia, a THS cross country athlete, turned to Logan with a serious question.
“Is there a secret ingredient in this lemonade?” she said.
“Yeah,” Logan said. “Lemons.”
To contact Alex Cantatore, e-mail acantatore@turlockjournal.com or call 634-9141 ext. 2005.
Originally published in the Turlock Journal 8/29/2008.
Retrieved from the Turlock Journal Web site.