Published: August 28, 2007 08:56 pm      

Lemonade poured for 13th time this year in two Bluefields

BLUEFIELD — Veteran lemonade servers and new volunteers poured the Bluefields’ 13th serving of free lemonade Tuesday.

The National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Va., posted Tuesday’s high temperature at 88 degrees. Forecasters predicted a high of 87 degrees today, with highs of 85 Thursday, 83 on Friday and 78 degrees for Saturday.

With the lemonade lassies and lads heading back for college, organizers with the Greater Bluefield Chamber of Commerce have recruited new volunteers to help staff the lemonade stations in Bluefield and Bluefield, Va.

Students with National College and First Century Bank have pitched in along with some of the earliest lemonade lassies.

Phyllis Thompson Walker, staffing the lemonade station in front of Goodykoontz Drug Store in south Bluefield, said she became involved in 1950 when her service club, the Subdeb at Beaver High School, was asked to pour lemonade. She is the first of three generations to pour Bluefield’s free lemonade.

“I did it in ‘50 and ‘51,” Walker recalled as the 1:30 p.m. cutoff time approached. “Back then we all wore short-shorts.”

Walker’s sister Liz Thompson also served lemonade in 1952. That year the lemonade lassies passed out so much free lemonade that the chambers of commerce in Bluefield and Myrtle Beach, S.C., hit on an idea.

That year’s lemonade lassies were treated to a free vacation at Myrtle Beach, Walker said. Besides rewarding the girls for their service, the well-documented trip provided plenty of good publicity for both Bluefield and Mrytle Beach. Bluefield area residents had become used to the austerity mandated by rationing during World War II, but the trip helped convince them that going on vacation was acceptable again.

“Those girls had the best time,” Walker said.

The record for lemonade servings during the summer is 17 set in 1988.

The free lemonade is donated by Kwik Kafe.

— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com