What’s the secret to winning the Mega Millions $1.25B jackpot? We asked GA lottery lovers
One secret to hitting the whopping $1.25 billion jackpot in the Mega Millions lottery drawing does not necessarily involve rabbits’ feet, horseshoes or four-leaf clovers.
Even so, some help from above may not hurt when it comes to beating the 1-in-302,575,350 odds.
In an unscientific poll of a dozen or so prospective Macon lottery players, divine intervention was deemed the No. 1 luckiest charm.
“Just pray that God’s on your side,” customer Gregory Patrick said as he strode away from the Circle K convenience store at Forsyth and College streets. A clerk there said lottery sales hadn’t begun heating up for Friday night’s drawing.
But a mile across the city, big-bucks dreams and the accompanying buzz of the unattainable were not hard to find at 10 a.m. on a gray summer Thursday at what is perhaps downtown’s busiest gas-and-grub mart.
The Marathon station at Walnut Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard features a lotto window 6 feet from its food counter where a glistening, spotlit array of golden-fried delicacies lie in state: tater wedges, pork chops, gizzards.
While he waited to pick his numbers, an area truck driver named Donald Jones figured he might be better off buying his tickets in another part of the country.
“If you can get in that lucky spot, that’ll do it,” Jones, 67, said. “Most of the time when they win all the big money, it goes North. Everybody up there, they got money and they’re the ones getting it. Every time. They just leave us to put the money in.”
Over near the hot dog roller racks, a man overheard Jones’ theory and chimed in, “Everywhere but here.”
A few other patrons laughed in agreement.
“South Carolina,” the man went on, “all the other northern states, they win big. We never get anybody winning here.”
“We make the pot fat,” Jones added, “while they get rich off of it. But sometimes you never know. You just have to keep trying.”
Later, another customer suggested prayer might supply a winning edge.
“That’s about the only thing that’ll give it a little hope,” Dontay Brown, 34, said. “Three, four, five times a day, just, ‘God, I need it to get me out of this struggle ... give me a blessing.’”
On his way out the door, Brown gave a widow buying her Mega Millions slips a dollar to go toward her purchase.
“Get you one more, baby,” he said.
George Wilkins, a customer who turns 80 next month, was dapper in a beige Kangol cap with a matching shirt and slacks as he waited to pay. He said there is no secret to lotto riches, no trick whatsoever.
“Just play,” he said.
Asked what he did for a living, Wilkins said he was “a gambler.”
Like in Atlantic City? Slot machines? Sports?
“Cards,” he said.
Poker. Five-card stud.
“There’s a little skill with it,” Wilkins said.
And, as with the lottery, risk.
“Don’t,” he advised, “play with your rent money.”
