A couple of days before the West End Fair - the (usually) annual event that marks the end of the summer in the
Poconos, I walked into the Sunoco on Manor Drive, you know the one located right off Route 33, and bought myself
a Scratch-Off Lottery ticket. There, right near the door, is one of those vending machines that offer a wide variety of
choices as to how much you want to spend on a single scratch-off ticket. I’ve seen some people spend as much as
twenty dollars on a single ticket, while others go right to the service counter to get a random drawing of numbers for
either the Mega Millions drawings or the Powerball. For myself, I tend to spend whatever singles might be left in
my wallet on $1 tickets. As lame as this is, I have won quite a bit. A couple of times, I’ve won twenty dollars from a $1
scratch-off ticket.
But the time I walked there a couple of days before the fair, I spent $2 on a single ticket. It was called the Cash
Incline. Most of the columns I scratched off were coming out with no numbers that matched my “winning numbers,”
and the frustration began to settle in, especially knowing that I could have spent those two dollars on a small can of
Red Bull or a cup of coffee, and it seemed instead that I basically threw out a couple of bucks to buy myself a
worthless piece of paper. Until I scratched off a symbol that looked like an arrow drawn from a quiver that was right there at the bottom of one of the columns. Scratching this symbol meant that I’d “instantly” won the corresponding prize at the bottom of the column. The prize: $50. Not bad. This was certainly enough to cover my spending money
for my time at the West End Fair, but, for me, it was the most money I’d won from the Pennsylvania Lottery.
It had me thinking about a story I’d read about earlier this year, that another convenience store located right in the
area had indeed sold a much more valuable lottery ticket. So I checked my facts. As it turned out, my memory was
correct. The Kermani Fish Market, located right in Brodheadsville, sold a ticket in early January of 2021 to a patron to
the tune of one million dollars. This, from a holiday-themed ticket worth $20. While the store received a $5000 bonus
for selling the winning ticket, we might not ever find out who the newest local millionaire may be. Maybe they stopped
in from traveling out of state.
Does remembering this incident make me want to go back to my store of choice and risk losing a $20 bill in order to
scratch off such a lucrative prize. Not really. It’s much safer, perhaps, to stick with the lower-cost tickets and play just
for fun, while maybe occasionally playing a couple of Powerball or Mega Millions tickets just to be “in the game,” as
they say. The chances of getting that jackpot are astronomical, but at least playing it means you have about as good
a chance as anyone else.
With the abundance of establishments selling lottery tickets and two grand casinos nearby, has gambling become a
part of the culture here in the Poconos? Do you play the lottery, and if you do, do you go for the higher-stakes
tickets? Does it usually pay off?
As it happens, I’m pleased with the $50 dollars I got. It helped to conclude my summer with a few nice memories.
