How to Be on TV in St. Louis, Missouri

There are a number of ways to be on TV in St. Louis, Missouri or any other city for that matter. Buy yourself a scanner and chase around after ambulances and police cars. Do something really unique, good, or heinous to get on the news. You could join a local organization and go down to KSDK at 5:30 in the morning and stand behind the weatherman as he reads the forecast in front of the station. Bringing a whole bunch of stray animals into your house and becoming eccentric always seems to do the trick. Having a really cute baby or a child that can sing or dance seems to work also. 

My own claim to fame and television notoriety came a few years ago when I became the Missouri State Lottery Champion. The theme of the Missouri State Lottery Commission is: “Win a ticket to Luckytown.” If you scratched enough tickets you might win a slot on the weekly game show where the grand prize was $100,000. I have to be honest with you. I’m not much of a gambler. If the Powerball gets to be over a hundred million dollars, then I might just buy a ticket. My Mom, on the other hand, loved to play the odds since she had retired from work. She even had a group of seniors that got together a couple of times a week and went to the casino to play the nickel slots, which was about all that she could afford on her pension. One lucky day she hit the jackpot, so to speak. All that scratching had paid off. She had won a chance to go on the lottery show and win big!

It was a couple of weeks before Christmas when she called and asked me if I wanted to take her place on the show. She said that she was too old and too camera shy to be on television at her age. She said that we could split any of the winnings. I agreed, reluctantly.