The feeling of the airplane settling on the runway in Portland was a fine one. I was exhausted, and ready to stretch out in my own bed and sleep for a week!
Lee and I had done some really crazy things in Reno, and sleeping wasn't one of them. But knocking off a huge win on a $1 slot machine doesn't exactly happen every day, suddenly we were richer than we had ever been in our lives.
I remember the look on the Cab driver's face as I pulled a wad of bills out of my shirt pocket, digging through them looking for a twenty and a five to pay him. He would have really been floored if he knew what was in the other pockets, let alone in Lee's purse!
Our car was parked right where we left it, I fired it up and we made the 30 mile trip to our nice little country home.
Lee and I just threw the suitcases in the middle of the living room, I dug wads of $100 bills out of my pockets and stacked them on the table, she did the same with her purse. There was $38,000.00 in cash, plus the huge check. It hit me just then how stupid we were, packing that kind of cash onto an airplane. It was a wonder someone didn't stuff a .357 up our noses!
I put the money in a Paper sack and stuffed it in a dresser drawer, nothing to do about it until Monday when the bank opened.
It was then that I noticed the light blinking on our message machine, so I walked over and hit the button. "You have 62 messages" the computer voice said.
That was a surprise, normal would be 3 or 4. I hit the play button, two dozen of them were requests for appointments, the rest all wanted to either find a time to meet with me about some stupid investment, or it was someone I didn't know wanting me to call them back. The whole damn tape was full of that, and the tape had run out, there must have been more. Just then the phone rang, the caller ID said "Unavailable", so I pulled the plug from the wall.