How Reverend Goodby accidentally won 50 million dollars in the lottery by losing the lottery It all started in January of 2015 when the Council received the letter demanding that the Ten Commandments be removed from outside the City Hall.  Council allowed that they would simply ignore the letter, but the Reverend was concerned that this would not be the end of it. Well, he prayed and studied and thought, but couldn’t come up with any solution. To be accurate, it needs to be said up front that the Reverend is not a gambling man.  He doesn’t even know how to play solitaire with a deck of cards, and while he knew there was a lottery he had no idea how it worked.  And if it wasn’t for that recurring dream he would never have even tried it. That dream always left him with 5 numbers.  After the seventh time of dreaming the same 5 numbers, he decided to play those numbers in the lottery.  Since he had no idea how it worked, he simply went down to the Fast Octane Gas Station on 17th street and told the clerk he wanted to play the lottery.  The Clerk, who would rather be doing anything other than clerking at Fast Octane, just pointed to the cards and told him to fill one out.  The clerk told the Reverend to be sure to block out the “Megaplier” on his card and that it would cost two dollars for each line he used on the card.  Each card had 5 lines, but the Reverend only needed one line to block out his 5 numbers. So the Reverend put the five numbers from the dream on one line of the card and slid it over to the clerk.  The clerk frowned, handed the card back to the Reverend and told him that he needed a Mega Ball number (a sixth number) for the card to print.  This was a problem for the Reverend because there was no sixth number in the dream.  He thought about it for a while and decided since the sixth number HAD to be between 1 and 15, all he need do is fill out 3 cards (15 lines) with the same five numbers (from the dream) and then choose a different sixth number for each line.  That would cost him 30 dollars.  He prepared his cards and went back to the clerk.  But, just before he gave the cards to the clerk he reached in his pocket and discovered that the only cash he had was a single 20 dollar bill.  That meant that he could only choose 10 of the 15 “sixth” numbers, so he threw one of the cards away.  The clerk picked up the two remaining cards that were left and ran them through the machine. By this time the Reverend thought he was being foolish and was getting ready to leave when the clerk brought his two tickets and cards back and said “that’ll be 20 dollars”.  For a moment he thought about not taking them, but in the end he paid his 20 dollars and left with the tickets. The grand prize for the lottery that day was 24 million dollars. The dream and the numbers in the dream went away that night.  A few days passed, and the Reverend, still feeling quite silly and even a little guilty about this, got on the internet and checked to see if he won. Much to his surprise the five numbers he had dreamed about were the ones that were drawn!  But to his dismay he found out that the “sixth” number was not on any of the tickets he had.  That sixth number must have been on the card he threw away at Fast Octane.  It was clear to him that his lottery tickets were losers.  With a sort of “oh, well” sigh he tossed the tickets into his trash can under his desk.  His feeling of guilt and foolishness was back again. A few days later he got to thinking about his numbers and wondered if they might be worth at least something since they were so  close to being exact.  The trash can hadn’t been emptied, so he reached to get the tickets ........ In order to understand what happened in the next four minutes one needs to take a moment to review how the lottery works... if one gets all the numbers right EXCEPT for the sixth number that line is worth a million dollars.  However, if the Megaplier is a 5 (which it was that day) then that line is worth 5 times 1 million, or 5 million dollars. The Reverend’s “losing tickets” had a total of 10 “losing” lines “ ---- ALL WITH THE SAME FIVE NUMBERS!!  So it turns out that those “losing” tickets he just picked out of the trash can were worth 5 million dollars per line, or a total of 50 million dollars.  As a side benefit, if one wins the lottery grand prize, the before-tax value is discounted by ~30 % if the prize is taken in cash rather than over 20 years, but the 50 million dollar (losing) win would be awarded at the full face value of 50 million. It took three days for the Reverend to fully come to grips with what had just happened.  After those three days he realized that accidentally “losing” the lottery turned out to be a 50 million dollar accidental WIN!  It seemed like the answer to a prayer. Well, in fact, it WAS the answer to his prayer....  He knew what he had to do.... After all, 2015 is a year that is evenly divisible by 5.... and every major event in the Reverend’s life happened in a year that was evenly divisible by 5.... The “Unpleasantness of 1944” There are only a few people alive today who know what actually happened during the “Unpleasantness”.  Some stories have been passed down, but no two of them seemed to agree on all the details.  The few people still alive who do know aren’t talking. But if one collects all the stories the general gist of the “Unpleasantness” is as follows: It was 1944 and wartime. The First Ward docks are the center point for all the oil shipments that go up river to the Pittsburgh refineries. There were 16 residents of Fairhope2 involved, and there were also 4 agents of a hostile foreign government. There was a fire on the docks and one of the tankers. There were 3 “hostile” foreign agents that were “collected” by the 16 Fairhope2 residents. The fire did relatively little damage due to the fast response of Fairhope2 residents. Reports were that there may have been 3 or 4 foreign agents -- at the time no one was exactly sure. In fact, it turns out that the fourth agent got away by jumping into the river.  We know this because in October of 1989 the Mayor received a letter from a lawyer in Leitchfield.  The envelope with the letter had been addressed to the Mayor - Fairhope2.  It had been found in a safe along with a note requesting that it be mailed to Fairhope2 only after the owner of the safe died.  Since the letter had been sort of “stuck” to the inside top of the safe no one was quite sure who or where the writer was.  The safe was subsequently tracked back through Brownsville, Munfordville and finally to the basement of the old Dime Store down near the square in Leitchfield.  But there were no other clues as to the source of the letter. The letter was dated April 27, 1962. It was an apology to the people of Fairhope2 for the damage caused by the “Unpleasantness” and request for forgiveness. It was signed “Wilhelm”.  That’s all that we can know for sure about the “Unpleasantness of 1944”,  but as a result, the City Council decided to deputize everyone in the city that was over 18 years of age. Thus the bi-annual swearing in of the Deputies began.  Every Fairhope2 resident over the age of 18 who wants to be is a sworn deputy of the Fairhope2 police force.  Also as a result, there hasn’t been a major crime in Fairhope2 SINCE 1944.  Fairhope2 also has a larger police force than most cities in either the State of Kentucky or Illinois, excluding Chicago of course.  Since being a Fairhope2 deputy is not a full time job, all of the deputies have other jobs.  Fairhope2 also has one of the lowest budgets for policing in either state.