Below-zero wind chills Saturday afternoon had little effect on people stricken with Powerball fever. They were hot with excitement, and a shot at the $365 million jackpot, ignoring en masse the Megabucks buzzwords, “Play Responsibly.”
“It’s been nuts! Powerballs, Megabucks, oh my God!” Rumford Food Trend clerk Linda Mingo said Saturday afternoon.
By 3:30 p.m., 161 Powerball tickets and 77 Megabucks tickets had been sold. The Megabucks jackpot is estimated to be a “mere” $3.9 million.
Called into work at noon, Mingo said she could not even get away from cash registers by 3:30 p.m. to vacuum rugs in front of the counter.
Saturday afternoon’s ticket-foraging frenzy continued at Victor News in Lewiston, Hannaford in Rumford, Mexico One Stop in Mexico and The Corner Store in Dixfield.
Clerks Diane Benoit and Leah Stevens at Victor News in Lewiston are hoping someone wins the Powerball jackpot.
“If nobody wins tonight, I don’t even want to imagine what it’s going to be like here Wednesday,” Benoit said at the end of her shift Saturday afternoon.
Like Megabucks, drawings are done on Wednesday and Saturday nights.
Customers came in droves to buy tickets.
“We’ve seen a lot of new faces,” Benoit said.
Robert Baitler of Naples was one of them. He’d never bought a Powerball ticket in his life.
“I’m getting this for my mother,” he said. She’d requested he buy one for her, because of the tremendous jackpot. “This is her first time, too.”
Jane Landry of Lewiston plays Powerball every week, but usually only buys a chance or two. On Saturday, she bought 10 tickets, and was looking them over in her hand before leaving the store. She’d splurged, she said, “just because the jackpot’s so big.”
Eighty percent of Hannaford Assistant Office Manager Sherrie Hansen’s Customer Service customers came to the Rumford store buy Powerball tickets.
Regular customers who typically bought one or two tickets, were buying them in groups of 10 or 20.
“Do you have Powerball?” Nancy Bean of Bethel asked of Hansen.
“If you win, I’d like supper in Italy,” Hansen told Bean after taking her money and handing her a ticket with three machine-picked sets of five numbers and a Powerball number each.
If Bean wins, she said, “I’d pay off all our bills, and buy a house in every area of the country that my husband and I like.”
Gloria Carter of Rumford said she bought her tickets Friday in case lottery machines broke down from overuse. She’d help out her nine other siblings, and pay college costs for two of her children if she won.
Hansen said if she herself won, she’d pay off her son’s education bills, and help Carter with her children’s tuition.
“If I won, I’d help as many people as I could. What would you do with $365 million? There’s no way you could spend it all. You’d have to help people with $365 million, and shame on you if you didn’t, with that much money,” Hansen said.
Mexico One Stop clerks Tami Turner of Peru and Kylie Elliott of Carthage had their hands full selling Powerball tickets. That and laughing at the offers of customers should they win.
“They all say they’re going to take us out,” Elliott said.
“I had more people telling me in the past two days that I’ll never have to work again,” Turner said.
“Would you like to buy a Powerball?” Corner Store clerk Bernadette Keefe asked Jennifer Cyr of Dixfield.
“What’s it up to?” Cyr asked.
“$365 million.”
“Give me $5 worth.”
Cyr said she sometimes buys Megabucks and Powerball tickets.
“I’m more of a scratch-ticket girl,” she said, but, if she won Powerball, “I’d do cartwheels down the street.”
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