$10 Worth: ‘Well, That Was a Case of Beer Blowed’

The California Lottery opened with mixed results Thursday in the mountain hamlets that lie along the state highway that snakes its way alongside the Trinity River between Redding and Eureka.

Retailers complained of delays in ticket deliveries and some dealers did not receive tickets at all. But, if the lottery is supposed to be fun, as its promoters insist, then it has to be deemed at least a mild success here at the Douglas City Store where a bunch of the boys yukked it up while they scratched the spots off their tickets.

“I’m going to parlay this into $1 million,” said Frank McClain, 53, a heavy-equipment operator. McClain, holding $2, stood in a line with half a dozen other local folks, waiting for the opening of the California State Lottery in Douglas City.

At 12:30 p.m., official kickoff time for the lottery, Jim Wagner, owner of the store located 35 twisting mountain miles west of Redding, sold the first of his shipment of 2,500 tickets. Within 15 minutes, he had sold $141 worth and paid out $15 in prizes. Wagner gets a 5% commission on gross sales. McClain took his two tickets to a store counter, bent carefully over them and gently shaved away the six spots with a pocketknife.

“How can you tell if you have a winner?” he asked.

It takes three like symbols out of the total of six to win a prize. McClain didn’t win. “I’m going to go home and put the carburetor on my Jeep and go hunting,” he announced. “Me and my dog get along better.”

“Well, that was a case of beer blowed,” said a smiling George Taylor, 49, also a heavy-equipment operator, who had just scraped the spots off $10 worth of tickets. Outside, Ralph Luckett, 65, of nearby Deer Lick Springs, sat in his pickup truck wearing a tractor cap that proclaimed, “Beer Drinkers Make Better Lovers.” He scratched at a lottery ticket and called to proprietor Wagner:

“What do you gotta get, three, Jim?”

Luckett didn’t win either.

But then Nila Shinton, as she walked back to her job as postmaster of the little mail office across the road, shrieked at Wagner:

“I won $5. Five, five and five. Pay off.”

Then she announced the headline to go with her story:

“Postmaster of Douglas City Wins $5.”

But, in some of the other hamlets farther west and even more remote than Douglas City, the lottery was not providing many laughs.

In Big Flat, about 60 miles west of Redding, Susan and Richard Arnold, owners of the Trinity River Inn general store and campground, were told by lottery officials Wednesday that their tickets would be delivered that afternoon. Later the same day the couple were called again by a lottery official and told that they would not receive any tickets after all.

Sandra Jones, manager of the Redding distribution center, which handles ticket delivery for the 12 northern counties, told The Times that the Arnolds have not yet been fully licensed and that the state agent who told them they would receive tickets “made a mistake.”

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said a bemused Susan Arnold. “It doesn’t really disappoint me. . . . But it would have been fun to get in on it from the beginning.”

Farther west, in Salyer, 93 miles from Redding, Sue Ayers, proprietor of the general store, is fully licensed to sell lottery tickets, but none were delivered for opening day.

On the morning of opening day, Ayers, wearing a lottery promotion button that asks, “Have You Played Today?” stood behind her store counter and asked lottery officials by telephone if they could tell her how to get her tickets.

She was told they were on the way.

Seven miles to the west in Willow Creek, furious Bob Eichelberger, a supermarket owner, had just been told by a lottery official that if he wanted his tickets he would have to drive the 100 grueling miles to Redding to get them himself.

Meanwhile, Ayers at the Salyer Store was told that Eichelberger could not pick her tickets up because they were on the way.

So she waited. Late in the afternoon lottery officials called again.

“They . . . said we would not be getting them today,” Ayers related. “They don’t seem to know where our tickets are.”