News : $700 million jackpot: Powerball ticket sales keeping Vinton clerks busy

Many people have been buying Powerball tickets, hoping they hold the record-setting winning numbers.

I stood in line today to do something for the very first time – something I always said I’d never do: Buy a Powerball ticket.

I thought the lines at convenience stores and the Express checkout lane at Fareway merited a story, and it occurred to me that someone who writes a story about something like this should participate at least once.

So, I spent $3 on Powerball ticket No. 280435654. I don’t plan on spending too much time dreaming about how to spend hundreds of millions of dollars ($428.4 million, at the time of this writing, according to the Powerball web site), but it was an interesting experience.

Imagine lining up to spend $3 on a small piece of paper, in the hopes that it could magically change your life, allow you to quit your job, buy a mansion and a luxury car or yacht, show your scornful classmates how rich you are and otherwise make available things you so far have only dreamed of doing or having.

The odds of winning are just under 1 in 300 million. That’s about the same as randomly picking any person who lives in America.

It is ridiculous to think it could happen to you or anyone I know.

But it has – and in one community where I used to write news stories, it has happened twice.

Thirteen years ago, I wrote about a janitor whose whole life changed when he shared the very first Powerball prize – actually he shared the $10.4 million prize with a woman from the St. Louis area.

A decade later, I interviewed the janitor, who by then had become the mayor of the town about the size of Vinton and about 90 miles south. On Christmas Eve in 1992 he realized he had the winning numbers.

Ed Brown later served several years as Mayor of Washington. He opted for the annual payout, driving to Des Moines each year to pick up his check. He was generous with his family but very conservative with his spending. He did build a new house on the edge of town, but it was a modest one. He said his goal was to invest his money so wisely and well that his income after his 20th and final annual check would be the same as it was while he was receiving his prize money.

Then, a few years ago, in one of those odd twists of fate too peculiar to make up, one of Brown’s peers from the Washington Class of 1971 also won a Powerball jackpot. In 2009, Dr. William A Steele, who now lives in Florida, won $189 million.

Mayor Brown told me he in 2002 that continues to play the Powerball, and never waits for the jackpot to reach the hundreds of millions.

However, the record payout is attracting more customers to area businesses where Powerball tickets are sold.

“It was crazy here yesterday,” said John’s Qwik Stop Manager Melissa Mosher.

“We’ve been swamped,” said Caleb Stewart, one of the clerk’s at John’s, the day before.

A steady line of customers has kept Fareway clerks increasingly busy as the jackpot has continued to grow.

“Remember who sold you the ticket,” said the Fareway clerk.

I promised to buy them all ice cream if I win.