David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Jan. 13, 2004

Just another state with just another lottery

I'm feeling a little under the weather. I've already had the flu this year (or something bearing a striking resemblance to the flu), so I doubt I've got it again. No, my malady is something that will last until next Tuesday at least.

I think I may be coming down with a bad case of lottery fever.

Next Tuesday is when it really kicks in. From then on, Tennessee will never be the same.

Wait a minute, that's not true. In fact, it's 180-degrees dead wrong. After Monday, Tennessee will be the same. Tennessee will be the same as an overwhelming majority of states in the sense that we'll have a lottery. Tennessee will be just another state with just another lottery. Rah, rah.

Maybe I'm a weirdo (maybe?). Or perhaps it's just that I prefer to take the road less traveled, but I think being unique is a good thing. I enjoy wearing a Virginia Tech sweatshirt in Knoxville on game days. I fancy goofy toppings like eggplant and chicken and banana peppers on my pizza. I delight in the fact that when I take my kids to the park after lunch on a weekday, I'm the only father among a sea of mothers. After Monday, Tennessee's unique status in the realm of state lotteries will be gone -- we'll be just like most everyone else.

I can't count the number of times visiting friends and relatives who live in different states were shocked to learn that we didn't have a state lottery. The realization usually happened at a grocery store or gas station when it suddenly dawned upon them that there were no lottery tickets for sale at the check-out counter.

The funny thing is that my out-of-state pals and family usually acted almost congratulatory toward me, as if Tennessee had a certain special something that gave us enough backbone to resist a lottery's promise of easy money.

"How do you guys not have a lottery?" they'd ask me as we stood in line with our Chiclets and beef jerky.

"Well, I don't know," was my usual response. "I guess we never needed one."

"Wow, that's great," they'd say.

"Why?" I'd ask, even though I knew what was coming next.

"Well, when they started the lottery in our state ..."

That's all I needed to hear. I've heard enough lottery stories to know how the rest of that sentence goes. After the predictable rolling of the eyes, the out-of-towner would regale me with stories of how when his state's lottery first started, there was a long list of financial ailments the games promised to cure. As the years went on, however, problems inevitably occurred -- the percentage promised for education wasn't quite what it was supposed to be or maybe the state citizenry didn't buy enough tickets to keep the game afloat or perhaps mismanagement set in and costs were spiraling out of control.

Whatever the reason for the lottery's problems, the story always ended with the same three words.

"It's a mess."

I've come to believe that governments are like children -- they want what they don't have, and as soon as they get it, they want something else. The most important difference between children and governments, however, is that most children don't have multimillion-dollar annual budgets. A government will always spend the money it has on hand, and usually it will spend more than that.

It's been said that money doesn't solve money problems. It's true. If you have money problems, chances are that money is not the problem. A lack of discipline typically is the culprit. Like every other state that has initiated a lottery, Tennessee is doing so to help alleviate "financial shortfalls," which is politician-speak for "money problems." Well, the lottery is on its way, but something tells me this won't be in the end of Tennessee's money problems.

I didn't vote for the lottery, but most everyone else did. That's fine. I applaud the democratic process. My problem is that there aren't too many states left that don't have a lottery -- 11 at last count, many of which are right here in the Bible Belt. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina don't have lotteries. Most of my friends and family live in states with lotteries.

I have some friends in North Carolina, and I suspect that I'll visit them in a few years, roll my eyes and end a discussion with "It's a mess."

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.