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Thursday, March 12, 2009

Irish I had a winning ticket

I thought this would be a good post in honor of St Patrick's Day. As I learn more about blogging I have found that some of the enjoyment comes, not from blogging myself, but teaching others how easy this is to do. Look for links in future posts of the blogs I helped launch (Gee, I hope they do actually launch).

Anyway, there I was out on a saturday with my other buddy, Robyn. She and I stopped at an unremarkable garage sale to paw through random stuff. I always go for the books. They sometimes seem the best icon for the era they were written in and can seem like time capsules themselves. My preference has always been reference books, odd how-to books, 50's era science fiction novels, and really, really old books when I can find 'em. In fact, the older the better. I am fascinated by the dated references within and when I can get lucky, the things that have been left behind. Case in point.
That unremarkable garage sale had a pocket leather-bound medical dictionary from 1924. I thought there might be some bizarre and outdated terms and medical conditions that I might find. Instead, I was awarded with an Irish Sweepstakes ticket. If I wasn't sure of its authenticity, I was doubly rewarded with this:
I say "award" and not "reward" because although I would like to think that I have found the winning ticket, I have to consider the number of tickets that were sold over the years and why a winning ticket would be stuck in a book and not cashed in. All the research I have been able to do points to what a long running scam the Irish sweepstakes really was. Mob controlled and preying on the sympathies for the Irish, and the need for greed, the money collected on these tickets never actually made it back to those under funded Irish Hospitals.

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