Brigette Davis

There was something about her.

Not everyone could have done it.

She was really perfect for this role, and she had the qualities that made it possible to thrive at it.

And that has everything to do with her, just who she was.

My mom was up taking numbers in the morning, early.

Some of her customers wanted to turn their numbers in before they went to work, and so she had to accommodate them.

I remember someone in particular, a customer who would love to go fishing on Saturday mornings, so she liked to turn her numbers in at 6 a.m.

A lot of people like to call in their numbers during lunchtime.

You know, there were these busier periods and then these sort of slowdown periods and then busy again.

And it got a lot more hectic as the afternoon wore on because there was a cutoff time.

So that was often the busiest time of the day, that time right before the evening.

So that was really how her day went, a lot of taking people's bets.

And also there were people who liked to come to the house and give their numbers directly to her.

So there was that piece of it.

There were people who liked to come in weekly and pay her directly, you know.

So there was this mix of collecting the money and then receiving it from people who showed up at the house.

How were the winning numbers chosen decided?

each city came up with its own way to determine a winning number.

And many of them landed on this idea that they would get the number from racing forms, daily racing forms from various racetracks across the country, because those numbers also changed all the time.

And there was a calculation that was done to determine each digit of these winning, three-digit winning numbers.