A Story From the Life of Roland K. Ghostwritten by Jon D.

Photo courtesy of howstuffworks.com

A Story From the Life of Roland K.

Ghostwritten by Jon D.

A Lucky Labor Day

What exactly does it mean to be lucky? Is it beating the odds? Or maybe drawing the long straw? Luck is a part of all our lives and whether one believes luck is real or if it is just caused by random events, it will happen with great impact at one moment or another. That is what I learned on Labor Day of 1955.

After a summer of a great deal of hard work at my doctor’s farm, I was able to make a good amount of money. The sun was out and bright on what was a perfect September afternoon in my little hometown of Lewisburg in Western Ohio. The Labor Day Festival was today and although I didn’t wish to use too much of the money that I had, I loved going and seeing everyone at the festival. My friends Lowell Davis and Donnie Whipp were with me when I was about to begin my first year of college. There were uncounted games to choose from, with so many people there from my town and neighboring towns. I don’t recall why exactly but I chose to play a game of bingo, it caught my eye. In my left overall pocket there were the few cents to my name. One game was ten cents so I pulled out two nickels and told the man working behind the booth that I wanted to participate in the next round of bingo. One round in and I quickly had won a dollar! I decided I was going to spend this stroke of luck very wisely.

As I walked around the festival I saw there was a raffle for a 1955 Plymouth Auto. I was currently driving my 1929 Model A Ford that I bought for $75 the year before. One raffle ticket cost 20 cents and with the dollar I had won I bought five raffle tickets because the sponsors wanted to sell as many as possible. All that was going through my mind was how great it would be to have that car for college. But I knew that my chances of winning were relatively small. Since the drawing for the auto was not held until 9:00 PM, there were miscellaneous other items raffled off before that time. My friends and I wanted to stay along with many other people to see who would win the car. When they finally announced the raffle winner I was very tuned in. They then announced my name as the winner of the auto. I won the 1955 Plymouth auto car. I turned ten cents into a new car and I was able to sell my Model A for $50 extra. I talked to my friends and other people at the festival and then I finally went home and told my parents what had happened. They were surprised and very happy for me. Some people from town came to our home when they heard the news.

That night I do not believe I slept well with all the excitement I had. The next day my father and I went to the Plymouth dealer downtown to see the car. It was very nice, consisting of a light blue body color, two doors, manual shift transmission, and a cloth interior. It took us several days of paperwork that had to be done to shift the ownership to me. I drove that car all the way through college before I decided it was time to replace it, I had it for about five years.One might say that luck was with me on that Labor Day of 1955. That out of all the names that could have been chosen, mine was chosen. I had no problem with winning the Plymouth auto, but was it really luck? Or was it just my odds?