Here Say is a project in community storytelling. We travel to a new place each week and ask people to share true stories about things we all experience: love, family, learning and more. To see where we've been, check out our interactive map. And to hear your favorite stories from last season, you can find our free podcast on iTunes.
We met Debby Thornhill who comes to bingo at the Knights of Columbus every Sunday afternoon. She told us about another one of her hobbies: fishing.
“That’s a lot of luck. Caught a thirteen pound catfish down at Osage River a couple of weeks ago, that was lucky. I have friends that live down by the lake. So they have a spot down there that we go back in this cove. Somebody had to get it in for me because I have problems with my wrist, I couldn’t pull it in, but they pulled it in for me. I caught it, and they yanked it in for me.”
Robert Johnson also attends the weekly game. We asked him if he had had any luck that day.
“Not today, but recently yes. Friday night I won two hundred and fifty dollars…That was at DAV in Jeff City.”
Johnson plays in three separate bingo games in Jefferson City and Columbia and the money he wins goes right back into the game.
“I save that money to play more bingo. It goes into a separate fund and that’s what I play bingo on. It is a fun game, I’ve been involved in bingo for many years. I used to call bingo in Macon Missouri. It was quite a commitment, cause it was every week.”
Marilyn Wyatt’s favorite part about attending the game is the people she plays with.
“I enjoy the people I sit with. We sit with the same people every week. They’re a lot of fun, they’re a lot of fun. They embarrass me a lot."
She told us how when one member of their group gets lucky, the luck tends to spread throughout the group.
"The people that I sit with, when we’re all on the same page, and we only need one number and we tell each other you know ‘one number,’ and they root for you, That’s pretty fun. And one time, Mary that come out here with me a while ago, her and Robert bingo-ed together. They needed the same number. And they did that twice!"
"And did they get it together?"
"Yeah! They split it together, it was fun."
We talked to Lynn Ash, who is the bingo co-chair for the Knights of Columbus. Although he helps put on the bingo games each week, he tends to stay away from activities involving luck.
“Lucky? That’s not me. That’s not my name. You know…we all play bingo, or some people go to the boat, I’m not one of the boat people, but people do different things for different chance, you know. We all do different things. Me? I don’t really do much for luck. I do things for stress relief. So I get out, I enjoy the outdoors. So that’s my thing.”
Although he isn’t big on activities involving luck, Ash considers himself lucky when it comes to his family.
"When you have all of your family together, and all in one location for the holidays and everything, that’s luck. That’s good. That’s the way it should be. Whether you call it luck or not, I don’t know. Maybe it’s lucky you can get ‘em all together at one time. Maybe that’s where the luck comes in."”