N.C. enters a new era with lottery
Friday, March 31st, 2006
By Chris Fitzsimon
By LAWRENCE KEECH, Staff Writer
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In office buildings, outside stores and at a stop light, people throughout Beaufort County were busy scratching Thursday. No, it wasn’t a rash causing this activity. It was a rush, a rush to play the North Carolina Education Lottery.
An issue that caused division through the state, the lottery became a uniting topic of conversation Thursday — the lottery’s debut — as people leaned on ice machines, tops of cars or other available places to scratch latex coatings off lottery tickets to determine if they could claim prizes worth up to $100,000.
The Daily News could not determine by late Thursday if any local residents won prizes worth more than $1,000.
The lottery’s scratch-off games began at 6 a.m., and one area radio station wasted no time cashing in on lottery fever. WERO filled its morning talk show by having its three DJs purchase and scratch off 100 tickets. The station invited listeners to call in to proclaim their winnings.
L.D. Thomas, who operates Dellinger’s Pawn Brokers in Washington, had the only reported setback of the day in the area. When the store opened at 9 a.m., a lottery machine would not work. The problem was corrected in about an hour.
“I hated it because we had to turn so many people away, but they trickled back slowly,” he explained, adding the store had sold 151 tickets in about two and half hours — about $368 in sales. He had 13 winners at that point, and five more winners walked in the door just after he tallied the winnings.
Thomas said one couple bought $200 worth of tickets.
A $25 profit on ticket sales Thursday wasn’t nearly enough to pay for Thomas’ lottery-related expenses, but he enjoyed customers’ excitement. He took photos of winners who bought tickets at his store, with the photos being posted on a wall. (more…)
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