Mini-Memoir: Lucky Guy

In 1993 I moved to New Hampshire from Vermont.  Then I needed to drive back to Vermont to close out some accounts and stuff  like that.  I stopped in the convenience store I'd always used and bought a lottery ticket and probably a pack of smokes.  I tucked the ticket in my wallet and drove back to New Hampshire.  After close to a year I realized I should check that ticket to see if it was a winner because they expire after a year.  My thought was, If I won two bucks I want that two bucks.  I drove over the border into Vermont to have it checked but they had changed all the lottery machines in the state and could not check a ticket as old as mine had become.  So I signed my name to the back of it and mailed it to the Lottery Headquarters in Barre, Vt.  A few days later the phone rang.  A man said, "Is this George Fitzgerald?"  I said I was.  "This is the Vermont Lottery calling.  Did you mail a ticket to us back on 10th?"  I said that, yes, I had.  He said, "You won a hundred thousand dollars."  I said I'd drive up in the morning to pick it up.