THE DESERT YEARS
The details get blurry here.
Depending on who you ask, Juan spent the next few years somewhere between West Texas, New Orleans, Biloxi, and Northern Mexico. The map changes every time the story gets told.
One version says he disappeared into the desert outside Marfa with nothing but a duffel bag, a pocketknife, and a guitar missing two strings.
Another says he rented a room above a bingo hall on the Mississippi coast and paid his rent by fixing air conditioners and teaching old gamblers how to make margaritas with whatever they had left in the fridge.
There are stories of freight trains.
Stories of card games.
Stories of a truck he lost in a cockfight bet and somehow won back six months later.
Nobody can prove any of them.
What people do know is that Juan was chasing something.
Not money.
Not fame.
A feeling.
The kind of feeling that only shows up around midnight when the jukebox is playing the right song, the air is still warm, and everybody at the table suddenly believes tomorrow can wait.
He drifted through border towns and back roads collecting ideas the way other people collect debts.
In El Paso, he drank with oilfield workers who swore the secret to a great lime drink was restraint.
In New Orleans, he learned that carbonation wasn't just texture—it was attitude.
In Northern Mexico, an old tequila distiller supposedly taught him how to pull every last ounce of brightness from a lime. The man refused to write anything down. Said recipes belonged in memory, not on paper.
Juan spent months trying to recreate what he'd learned.
Too sweet.
Too flat.
Too clean.
Too safe.
The failures piled up.
So did the stories.
Some nights ended with breakthroughs.
Some ended with him sleeping in the back seat of whatever vehicle he still owned that week.
The years blurred together.
The miles stacked up.
And somewhere between the desert dust, the neon signs, the cantinas, and the coastlines, Juan finally found what he'd been looking for.
A formula.
Not complicated.
Not precious.
Just right.
Bright lime citrus.
Crisp carbonation.
A clean finish.
Just enough edge to feel dangerous.
The kind of drink that tasted equally at home on a fishing dock, a dance floor, a tailgate, or a rooftop at 2 a.m.
He called it Lime and Dime.
Because if all you had left was a lime, a dime, and one good story...
you still had everything you needed for a night worth remembering.
And according to some versions of the legend, that was exactly how the company started:
One borrowed cooler.
Two cases.
Three bad business decisions.
And a line of thirsty people that somehow never stopped growing.