>
> My apology for picking on the Alna lottery. In NY we are often too
> stupified to know a good thing.
>
> One of our employees recently won a $10,000 jackpot ticket on the NY
> lottery. The state took $4,000 in taxes, and kept the remaining $6,000
> claiming he had not paid off his child support, which it turns out he
> had done. Now he has to pursue the verification and collection process,
> which makes it all seem like a boring day job. We have not heard
> anything further on this and are waiting several leaftimes for the party
> to ensue. I've been sipping on one bottle of Rolling Rock for a week
> now.
>
> My question to our esteemed friend Mr. Marcus, who was in Brooklyn
> recently, what do you get when you win the lottery in Alna?
>
Its not the Alna lottery, its the Maine Lottery, the guy was just
purchasing and scratching off his ticket at the Alna Store. Alna's
population isn't quite big enough to support a viable lottery. In fact, as
I may have mentioned, it took 20 years for our population to grow to a size
that surpassed that of the building on W. 111th St. we moved here from.

But if Alna did have a lottery the prize would most likely be a complete
set of Le Comedie Humaine, in French. Or, maybe, a CD set of Brendel
playing the complete Beethoven sonatas. Or, most likely, a waiver of the
fee on a concealed weapons permit, and a new snowmobile battery.

Yeah, and it was just my luck to show up in the borough of Kings a week
later than I wanted to.

Bruce Marcus
Alna, Maine. Where even our jerks are smart. But our wild turkeys are
smarter.