Maybe it was a Pittsburgh thing, but when I was growing up my mother and many of her friends played the numbers.

My mother was the vice president and co-owner of my father’s photography business. While my father was on the road taking and selling photographs, she managed the business from home, hunched over an adding machine, keeping the books, answering telephone calls, preparing meals, and taking care of us children. Every once in a while, somewhere in the middle of all that activity, she’d find time to play the numbers.

I remember looking at the word GOD and deciding that the letter G looked like a 5. Somehow, I turned the letters into a three-digit number and gave it to my mother. And she played it!

What I didn’t know then was that playing the numbers was practically a neighborhood institution in Stowe Township and McKees Rocks. Beginning in the 1920s, local bookies collected bets in bars, barbershops, and corner stores.

Looking back, I can still picture my mother at that adding machine, surrounded by work and family responsibilities, finding a moment to take a chance. And I still wonder if we ever won anything on the word GOD.

Did any of your family members play the numbers? I’d love to know.