obstrepero.us

An interesting story in tomorrow's New York Times:

For Mack W. Metcalf and his estranged second wife, Virginia G. Merida, sharing a $34 million lottery jackpot in 2000 meant escaping poverty at breakneck speed.

...

But trouble came almost as fast. And though there have been many stories of lottery winners turning to drugs or alcohol, and of lottery fortunes turning to dust, the tale of Mr. Metcalf and Ms. Merida stands out as a striking example of good luck - the kind most people only dream about - rapidly turning fatally bad.

- New York Times, 5 Dec 2005

Here's a guy that was working in a plastic factory, was separated from his second wife, had a 21-year old daughter that he abandoned as a baby (along with her mother, his first wife), and just generally hadn't made a hell of a lot of his 45 years. That is, until he won a $65 million Powerball drawing in 2000 (which, incidentally, is worth $23 million in cash after taxes).

Perhaps you have seen as many advertisements as I have, and have recognized the story as exactly the premise of some dumbass NBC show called My Name Is Earl. Check it out:

If it weren't for the quality of the photograph, would you know which schlub was which? Unfortunately, the real life story is not quite as wholesomely comedic as the TV version. The real Mack Metcalf first had to split his jackpot with his wife, who was long gone and living with her boyfriend, for reasons that aren't clear to me (although I could take a wild stab and guess that Kentucky is a common property state and he didn't have a choice). Then his first wife sued to get unpaid child support and a trust fund for their daughter, after a county social worker recognized his picture and tipped them off. An ex-girlfriend showed up and talked him into giving away another half a million. There wasn't much left by the time he died from his alcoholism, about three years later. So it goes.

I don't know if there is really anything much to be learned from the story of Mack Metcalf, it generally being a bad practice to generalize from a sample size of 1, but it was interesting, anyway. I might think this guy was just a jackass and that I wouldn't have thrown the money down the toilet like that, but is it true? It seems likely that even with ten million dollars, I would still be going to Taco Bell and screwing around with computers. I could claim this as evidence that I already have as much material property as I could really want, but Jen considers it a great failure of imagination.

05 Dec 2005 01:53 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments