WINNER'S SURPRISE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 32, 7 February 1934, Page 8

WINNER'S SURPRISE.

[AUCKLAND RETURNED SOLDIER LUCK CHANGES AT LAST. '•Hold me up!" The voice that came over the telephone belonged to Mr. H. A. Brown, an Aucklandc'r born and bred, and his jocular appeal for assistance was his reply when informed that he had won the first prize of £2000 in the "Lucky Surprise" art union. "Tell my wife to put that ticket in the safe right away," Mr. Brown added, and this time there was no tone of joking iu his voice. When Mr. Brown purchased picket No. M 55327 from a seller near the intersection of Queen and Customs Streets he did not write his real name on the butt. Instead he used the initials of the nickname bv which he i.s known to all his friends—r'lvnockout." The butt was- filled in "K. 0.8.," 11, Vincent Street, Auckland, and the choice proved a happy, one. Mr. Brown had four tickets in the art union, two purchased in Auckland and another two bought at the Thames, while his wife had a single ticket.

A reporter who went in search of the winner of the big prize found Mrs. Brown standing on the footpath outside No. 11, Vincent Street. Asked if she knew anybody whose initials were "Iv.O:B.," she replied that she did—her husband was well known as "Knockout Brown." A. hurried explanation followed, and she negotiated the stops leading to No. 11 iu record time. "Ho\« much?" she asked, as she hurried to the house. "I don't know what to say, I can't think," she said. [ Quickly she found.a ticket, but the number was not the. winning one. "Thatwas mine," she explained, as she went to a telephone to call her husband.' Mr. Brown was at lunch when the call was received at the.outward goods shed at the railway yards, but he rang within a few minutes, and after a hurried conversation • Mrs. Brown disappeared into the living room again. When she reappeared she held another ticket, and this time the number tallied exactly with the winning one. "Don't worry about that," Mrs. Brown told her lyisband when instructed to make sure that the ticket was kept sa'fe.

Mr. Brown himself was all smiles when 'interviewed a few minutes after he had been informed of his luck. In answer to a question he said that he intended to buy himself a small business. "I have bfeen chasing the things ever since they started, but this is the first time I have ever won a prize," he said. Born in Vincent Street, Mr. Brown went to the war with the Nineteenth Beinforcements and was away for over three years. When peace came he was a member: of the Diggers' Concert Party. He was for seven years in the outward goods department of the railway. A job as barman followed and then he found himself out of work again. On Monday of the present week he obtained casual work at the railway goods shed again. He has no family.