The Gamble

The Ford Thunderbird in the picture below isn't the same one my father bought in the late 1960s, but it's easy to imagine how owning a luxury car like this one could make anyone who loved its stylish elegance feel on top of the world. And in my father's case, to temporarily forget that he had a wife and five children who might think that there were a lot better ways to spend the money than to make a down payment on a car.

I didn't know about the winnings at first. I was just fourteen, the year before heading to a boarding school in Pennsylvania on scholarship. Dad walked in the door of our home, seven rooms on the second floor of a three-family house. His face looked tired, but I remember thinking I had never seen him so happy.
He unfolded his worn brown leather wallet, which was stuffed with hundred dollar bills, new and old twenties and fifties. The sight of so much money--more than I'd ever seen up close--jolted me. But instead of feeling any thrill over the idea of new wealth, fear knocked me over with a thud. Where had Dad gotten it? His job pouring concrete sidewalks and driving a taxi certainly never commanded money like this. Dad looked at me expectantly. But I didn't know what to say. So I pretended. 
"Wow, Dad!" I said. I felt ashamed of what I was thinking. What kind of daughter--outside of crime families, maybe--worries that her father robbed a bank? I couldn't ask him directly, but it was all that my teenage self could think in that moment.