$56-Million Prize Fires Lotto Fever : Jackpot: Lines are long to buy tickets to a fantasy of wealth in a bankrupt county.

It’s a chance to travel. It’s a chance to go to school. It’s a chance to tell your evil boss to shove . . . off.

For those hopeful crowds of Californians who scarfed up Super Lotto tickets Wednesday, the $50-million grand prize was more than just the ninth-largest jackpot in state history.

It was a chance to get a life.

Maybe nowhere more than in bankrupt Orange County did the prospect of sudden riches seem so sweet.

At liquor stores and corner markets, in office pools and grocery marts, county residents saw the word “lottery” as a potent antidote to less jovial words floating around these days, like “layoff.”

Give or take a few yachts and Rolls-Royces, most people standing in those long lottery lines were hatching the same plan:

1. Win the Lotto.

2. Get blotto.

3. Make “Kiss off, world!” a personal motto.

Everywhere, people had a glazed look in their eyes, as fantasies of fiscal freedom seized the collective subconscious. Driving, shopping, working, people were hypnotized by the hypothetical.

Lisa Burns, a clerk with the county’s survey department, said she and her co-workers have been edgy for months about county threats to downsize them into oblivion.

“They’re talking about privatizing our department, so we’re all going to quit first,” she told the busy clerks at the 7-Eleven at Flower and 17th streets in Santa Ana.

The clerks, who had already sold 4,000 tickets by 1 p.m., greeted Burns’ optimism with the semi-guilty look of carnival barkers who have seen too many hopes dashed.

“Good luck,” one clerk said, forking over her tickets, but his heart wasn’t in it.

After pooling their mad money and raiding the coffee fund, Burns and her friends bought 114 collective shots at early retirement.

Of course, the Internal Revenue Service takes its 28% cut, but the group would still get $2.5 million a year to divide for the next 20 years.

*

And lottery officials predicted the jackpot would go even higher before Wednesday night’s 7:57 p.m. drawing--perhaps $55 million--thanks to the public’s ticket-buying spree.

On an average day, roughly 8 million lottery tickets are purchased. Wednesday, the number was expected to hit 30 million.

As she pondered the different dirty words she might scrawl on her resignation letter, Burns was still bucking for employee-of-the-month honors, cheerfully admitting the following:

Should she pick the six lucky numbers, she’ll lend a few million dead presidents to those poor-mouthing county supervisors.

“I’m happy, I’ve got a great life,” she explained within earshot of several dumbfounded players.

After all, she added with largess: “It’s 50 million!”

Try telling that to Dave Pickrell, he of the tightly clenched fist, who stood patiently in line behind Burns and guffawed at the suggestion--the notion!--that he might donate some of his winnings to the Board of Supervisors.

“I wouldn’t give those clowns the time of day!” he said, buying five lottery tickets and slipping them into his billfold as if it were real money. “I wouldn’t give them two cents!”

Picking the winning numbers was sometimes left to chance, but many chose numbers with meaning.

A combination of puppy love and logic motivated 17-year-old Yunnie Snyder and her sister Mei Li, 21.

*

Both sisters were huddled over their lottery ticket for 15 minutes, haggling about numbers like a couple of crazed accountants.

Each number, they explained, was carefully selected, and most had some connection to -- they giggled -- the guys on whom they had crushes.

Yunnie explained that “22 is his birthday . . . 29 is his age.”

“He,” she said, squirming, was named Mike.

With $50 million in the bank tomorrow, Yunnie would buy a record store and hire Mike to work behind the counter. The force of the fantasy almost knocked her over.

“That’d be rad,” she whispered.

But here’s the $50-million question: Given a choice of Mike or the money, which would it be?

“That’s easy,” said her sister, as Yunnie suffered a nearly fatal attack of blushing. “I ask her that all the time. I’m like, ‘Would you rather have all the money in the world or Mike?’ And she always says, ‘Mike.’ ”