There is a lonely stretch of highway I travel along quite frequently. Usually it's desolate and stark, but, in its own way, it's beautiful. I find myself smiling as I drive along the black asphalt.

One day as I drove, I noticed a stand that advertised "freshly squeezed lemonade" set up on the side of the road. A beautiful young woman was pouring freshly squeezed lemonade into tall, thin glasses. A curiosity, to say the least, since I rarely saw anyone else on this long stretch of road. So I stopped, got out and went over to the stand to see what was what.

"Would you like some lemonade?" the young woman asked, holding one of the tall, thin glasses out to me.

"How much does it cost?" I asked, taking the glass as I did.

"It matters how much you drink. Just tell me when you've had enough." The young woman smiled at me as I drank the cool lemonade. When I was finished with the first glass, she took it from me, refilled it and handed it back. She took a glass for herself, and we began to talk. We spoke of the ethereal things. The foggy stuff that disappears when the light gets too bright. We drank all of the lemonade she had, and then she handed me the bill.

"This is it?" I asked, surprised that the amount was so small.

"Well," she said, winking at me. "You were really thirsty, so I gave you a discount."

I settled up, and said, "Thanks, I needed that."

"Come back by any time," she said. I nodded, got back in my car and headed on my way.

Every day after that, I stopped by the lemonade stand. Sometimes I would drink a lot of lemonade and stay for hours, swapping stories from the slipstream. Other times I'd just have a small glass and ask her how business was.

"Too much is never enough," she said, smiling. I nodded as if I knew what she was talking about.

One day while we were having lemonade together, she suddenly took my hand and said, "I'm moving the business into town. I've been moonlighting in a few other places, and I sell a lot more lemonade in town than out here in the boonies."

I nodded, said I understood. "I can't come out here all the time, either," I said. "I've been ignoring the rest of my life for your sweet, freshly squeezed lemonade."

The young woman circled her arms around my waist and said, "Help me put all of this away, and the drink's on me today." I nodded, helped take the stand down and put everything in her lemon truck, an old milk truck that had been repainted with large lemons and letters that said "Lemonade!"

It was a hard few weeks breaking my lemonade jones, but my life came screaming back at me, asking me where I'd been. What had I been doing? Why hadn't I been around? I spent a lot of time picking up the scattered debris of life before lemonade, but I would still take a drive out on that lonesome highway. The lemonade stand, of course, was long gone.

While walking around the dirt where the stand used to be, I noticed a slip of paper. It was a fortune from an oriental cookie, and it read, "There are the things you really miss but don't need, and the things you really need but forget to miss when they're gone. Figure out the difference."

I began to notice the occasional lemonade stand on the side of the road while I was driving around town. The young woman was not manning the stands, and at each one a sign hung that said, "Out of lemons, be back in 10." Every once in a while I would stop and wait for ten, twenty, thirty minutes, but the young woman never showed with more lemonade.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, I spotted the young woman serving lemonade to a lunch crowd near a large office building. In the parking lot behind the stand was her lemon truck. A man was sleeping in the front seat, apparently waiting for the young woman to finish her work.

"I missed seeing you out on my lonely road," I said when I got to the front of the line. She handed me a paper cup full of lemonade.

"Well, I told you. Business wasn't very good out there," she said with a wink. "A girl's gotta eat."

I nodded and drank the lemonade down with one gulp. It tasted different from before. I looked into the cup and then at the sign on the stand, which no longer said "freshly squeezed." Lined up by the lemon truck were empty instant lemonade powder containers.

"Another?" she asked, pushing another paper cup at me.

"I'm good," I said, frowning a bit as my tongue tried to wash the taste of the tart instant lemonade powder from my mouth. "But he looks thirsty," I said, nodding at the guy asleep in the lemon truck.

"Oh, he won't drink this stuff," she said, blushing a bit. "I have to make the freshly squeezed kind for him."

I nodded in understanding, dropping my paper cup beside the stand in the box that said, "Trash."

I still see her occasionally, selling her lemonade for the masses near office buildings and book stores, but I don't stop for a cup. Lately I've been driving down my favorite desolate highway, wondering where all the freshly squeezed lemonade stands have gone.

Matt Worley is suffering from a touch of the metaphor.