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The ADVANCE, February 3, 2021 /Page 5A
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
—James Russell Lowell
editorials
323 Mesa Millions
J* 9 o
In case you
were wondering,
my husband and I
didn’t win the Mega
Millions jackpot
last week. I repeat
— we did NOT win
the lottery. We played, of course. We always
buy a ticket or two when the jackpot gets
up into the mind-boggling amounts. That
was the case last week, when the jackpot
approached a billion dollars. I’m not even
sure how many zeros are in a billion dol
lars, and I’m good at math and numbers.
I wasn’t aware that the jackpot had
grown so large until my husband, Gene,
heard about it on the evening news.
“Let’s go buy a ticket,” he said later that
night. I was tired and had already changed
into my sit-on-the-sofa-and-watch-tele-
vision clothes. Ten minutes later, I found
myself in the passenger seat of our old
green Ford Expedition zooming down
the dark highway with the dog in the back
with her head hanging out of the window.
He pulled up to the curb of the store,
shifted into park, and handed me a ten dol
lar bill.
“I can’t remember how to do it,” I said.
“Do I have to fill out a card or something?”
“Just hand the money to the girl and
say, ‘Quick picks,”’ he answered.
I followed his instructions. The clerk
was kind and handed me a slip of paper
with the numbers on it. That’s when I de
cided to make some small talk with her
and the other front clerk.
“If we win, we’ll come back and give
you guys some of it, okay? We’ll share.”
The clerk leaned across the counter,
grinned, and said, “Honey, if I only had a
penny for every time a customer has said
that...”
She and the other girl cracked up
laughing.
“I’m serious,” I said, which made them
laugh even harder. I exited the store and
hopped back into the truck with Gene and
the dog.
As we drove home, we dreamed big.
We talked about all the things we would
do if we happened to win close to a billion
dollars, but the reality is, I doubt we could
spend that amount of money. Assuming
we invested the jackpot in some type of
conservative fund, the daily accumulat
ing interest would be an unfathomable
amount of money on its own.
“It would be a full time job just to
manage all the money and try to spend it,”
my husband said.
“I’d love to give it a try,” I replied,
thinking of all the good deeds I could do
as I watched the oncoming headlights
through the windshield.
I’ve never been much of a gambler,
and playing the lottery is a lot like gam
bling, but with much worse odds. Indeed,
the odds of winning the Mega Millions
jackpot is approximately one in 302 mil
lion. To put that in perspective, there are
approximately 331 million people in the
US, and if most people bought a ticket, the
odds are similar to only one person in the
US holding the winning numbers. Still,
every now and then, someone wins Mega
Millions. It’s quite amazing.
My father was a gambler, and he loved
playing the lottery, though Georgia didn’t
have a lottery when he was alive. He had
favorite numbers he played if he visited a
state with a lottery: 2 - 6 - 9 - 19 - 30 - 33.
Five of the numbers represented the
birth dates of everyone in our immediate
family. Daddy’s birth year was 1933, which
is why he used the 33. My sister usually
plays my father’s numbers.
The morning after the Mega Millions
drawing, I realized we only matched one
sad number on our ticket. We did not win.
We had essentially thrown our money
away — again.
“Did you guys win?” I texted my sister.
“Nope. We only got one number,” she
texted back. “But we saw on the news that
someone somewhere won the jackpot last
night.”
Well, at least someone won, and at
least some of the proceeds from our lot
tery tickets went to help fund Hope schol
arships and Pre-Kindergarten programs.
It was fun to dream for a little while. We’ll
play again when the jackpot gets ridicu
lous again, and who knows, maybe we’ll
win, but I doubt it.
: rom the Porch
By Amber Nagle
Before people
could walk down
the street or drive to
the store watching a
movie on their mo
bile phone, there ac
tually was a time
when, if you wanted
some fun, you had
to make it yourself.
Outdoor activities were popular be
cause they were mostly free. You could
split white oak and make baskets and
chair bottoms until the cows came home.
Uncle Guy Phillips used some of his free
spring Sundays to wander through the
woods looking for a baby crow just
bumped out of the nest.
Guy took the crow home, fed it, raised
it, split its tongue and taught it to talk.
There were fish to be caught, sling
shots to be made, paper dolls to be cut
out of magazines. The list of home-grown
entertainment activities was endless, but
you had to do it yourself.
Some activities were social in nature
but churches frowned on dancing.
My father played in a five member lo
cal string band and regularly played on
someone's front porch or in a barn.
He said, in his later years, that it
wasn't his fault if people wanted to get up
and dance, but he was not playing for a
dance, only entertainment.
I don't know that his description
would have held up with the local church
one mile away. The congregation was
known for “turning out” members for
dancing, but according to him, most of
the people at the “entertainment” were
members of the church.
had. My grandparents told of attending a
“corn shucking,” in which a room was
cleared of furniture and filled with un
shucked dry corn.
Young people started at a door and
shucked their way through the room. The
first to find a red cob received a prize.
After the corn was shucked they
could walk around the room while listen
ing to a string band.
Around Thanksgiving people brought
in neighbors to help cut and grind sugar
cane, then boiled it down into syrup. The
first one stung by a yellow jacket got a
prize.
Around September through Novem
ber, depending upon how far north they
lived, church groups and communities
held peanut boilings.
This is one of the few entertainments
that required some planning.
Fires were built under cast iron wash
pots filled with salted water. Green pea
nuts were dumped into the pots and al
lowed to boil until the shell softened.
Young couples leaned against each
other to dull the snap of a fall night and
ate boiled peanuts. They also sang, played
word games and whatever young couples
do.
I don't know where she found it but
the Kansas Woman came home with a
bag of “raw” peanuts. They were just pea
nuts that had not been roasted but were
not really “green” either.
I let them soak overnight in salt water
and the next morning let the Instant Pot
hold them for just over an hour.
The result was a pleasing step back in
time — Southern Caviar.
joenphillips@yahoo.com
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
Talking Current Events
With Skeeter Skates and
the Ryo Coffee Club
I had just
hung up from a
robocall
wanting to
extend the
warranty on a
car I no longer
own when the
phone rang
again. I
assumed it was
some helpful
robot offering to consolidate credit
card debts I don’t have or trying to sell
me a back brace I don’t need. You can
imagine my surprise when I discovered
it was Skeeter Skates, owner of Skeeter
Skates Tree Stump Removal and Plow
Repair in Ryo, Georgia. Skeeter Skates
may be a lot of things. A robot he is
not.
“Hoss,” he said with no preamble
— Skeeter isn’t much for preambles
— “me and the boys in the Ryo Coffee
Club was wanting to get your take on
what in the dickens is going on in the
country these days. Walleye, who runs
the bait shop over in Red Bud, thought
you might be able to share a little
information with us. I told Walleye it
was worth a try because you usually
have about as little information as
anybody I know of.” Dealing with
Skeeter Skates requires a thick skin.
“First off,” Skeeter inquired, “we
was wondering how come folks
waving American flags and calling
themselves patriots decided to go and
tear up the Capitol last month. That
don’t make no sense to us. In fact,
Uncle Coot, who is recently retired
from the porta potty transportation
industry, thought that was downright
unpatriotic. He says how many
patriots do you know who go running
around in a hat with buffalo horns on
their head?”
I told him I couldn’t answer that
one. Maybe the guy was headed to
Little Bighorn to help out General
Custer and took a wrong turn in
Kansas City.
“You think that ol’ orange-haired
boy sicced the crowd on the Capitol
because he didn’t get reelected?”
Skeeter asked. “He seemed awfully
mad about it.”
I said I would prefer not to answer
that in case some of the 71 million
people who voted for Donald Trump
might be reading this. They are not in
the best of humor these days. The last
thing I need right now is a visit from
Rudy Giuliani or Buffalo Boy.
Skeeter said Booger Bledsoe, who
runs the local roadside vegetable stand
over in Sugar Hill, thinks some of the
mob’s behavior was because they were
tired of seeing a bunch of punks on
television burning buildings and
disrespecting police and liberal weenie
mayors letting them get away with it.
I thought that insightful on
Booger’s part and said it probably was
one reason for the Capitol riot but to
quote my sweet Momma, “Two
wrongs don’t make a right,” which is
probably the last thing either side
wants to hear right now.
By Dick Yarbrough
“Hoss, we was wondering how
come they are impeaching that ol’ boy
again,” Skeeter asked. “He ain’t even
president no more. That don’t make
no sense, neither.”
No, it doesn’t, I told Skeeter. The
effort is not going to be successful
and, sadly, is only going to serve to
divide the country worse than it
already is.
Skeeter said Walleye wanted to
know if this was going to get the mob
all stirred up and they would try to
storm the Capitol again.
I said that wasn’t likely because
authorities would be ready this time
but there was always a chance of
random acts of violence in places
where it was least expected. Skeeter
said he and the group had talked about
that very thing. Walleye was in the
process of reenforcing the door to his
bait shop. Bogger Bledsoe had
installed a camera around his roadside
vegetable stand and not even a guy
wearing a hat with buffalo horns
would dare mess with Skeeter Skates.
He has a stump grinder and knows
how to use it.
The only one not concerned was
Uncle Coot. When you’ve spent your
career around porta potties, even the
most aggressive rioter is going to want
to stand a good ways upwind.
Skeeter announced it was time to
wind things up. Unlike the fancy
pants in the media, he said, he and his
colleagues had an honest day’s work
ahead of them. I said that was okay
with me. I had some important
business to tend to myself. There was
a robot on the other line wanting to
extend the warranty on a car I didn’t
own anymore. After dealing with
Skeeter Skates and the Ryo Coffee
Club, I must admit I was looking
forward to talking to the robot.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@
dickyarbrough.com; at P.O. Box 725373, At
lanta, Georgia 31139 or on Facebook at www.
facebook.com/dickyarb.
Jla A&uancE
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