In 1991, my father was working in an office in San Diego, California. One morning, as he was sorting through the junk mail, he noticed an advertisement for perfumes, potions, fortune tellers, and Tarot cards. My father ignored that type of promotion, so, as was the usual practice in his department, he passed the ad along to the time clerk; a man named Harold. Harold was interested in any numbers that might give him an edge at the horse races starting that week in Del Mar.
Harold came to my father’s desk the next day and showed him an announcement that he’d circled in the flyer. Harold said he was very interested in this particular ad. It was a block letter advertisement that promoted a fortune teller who claimed he would send a printed copy of a person’s fortune along with his or her lucky numbers, all for $20. Twenty dollars was a lot of money for Harold, but my father could tell that Harold really wanted the numbers. Harold told my father that he would go halves with him if my father would send away for the fortune. My dad explained that the forecast would be for my father since he had to enclose a check, along with his own birthdate, and birthplace. My father asked if a partial fortune would be enough for Harold. Harold answered that he would be happy to accept a copy and to ‘ride along with the numbers’. Harold gave my father ten dollars and my father sent a check that evening to the fortune teller in Massachusetts.
A week later my father received a response in the mail. He took the letter to work and made a copy for Harold. Having fulfilled his part of the agreement, my father didn’t read the response for several days. When he finally read it, he laughed in disbelief. There was a reference to the first week in August. The fortune claimed that my father would inherit something of great value, like a necklace. Since my father didn’t think that he had any relatives who would bequeath him jewelry, my father forgot about the prediction.
On a Sunday in early August, my father answered a loud knock on the door to his apartment. It was his neighbor, Sam, who wanted my father to drive him to the Veterans’ Hospital. Sam said that he wasn’t feeling well. On the way to the VA Hospital, Sam asked my father to hurry because he was having chest pains. Minutes later my father arrived at the hospital with Sam. There they were met by the security guard who helped my father take Sam inside.
My father returned to the front of the hospital so that he could park his vehicle. It was then that my father started having difficulty breathing! He climbed out of his car and stood with his arms on the roof of his vehicle while trying to catch his breath.
The guard came over to see what was wrong. When he saw that my dad was having trouble breathing, he helped my father back inside the hospital. A doctor came over to check my father. He told him to lay down on a gurney next to Sam’s, and told my father that he was having a heart attack! My father was admitted and early the next day was transferred to a nearby hospital.
Later that week my father had an angiogram. His doctors told him that he needed open-heart surgery and that they should start operating immediately. My father underwent a quadruple by-pass that afternoon. He then spent eleven more days in the hospital.
After my father returned home he went through his pile of mail and found the letter with the forecast. He read it again, without much interest, and threw it away with the rest of the junk mail.
Three weeks later, when my day went back for a follow up appointment with his surgeon, one of the nurses questioned my father about his recovery. “How’s your ‘necklace’?”, she asked, referring to my father’s surgical scar.
My father asked, “Did you just call my scar a ‘necklace’?”
She said ‘yes’ that was what they called it, then laughed and went out the door.
Harold did extremely well at the horseraces with the numbers he’d received, while my father continued to wear his ‘necklace’…valued at almost $50,000, paid for by my father’s insurance!