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| Windfall Spending |
| December 29, 2000
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Gordon Hicks will buy a new tractor trailer truck next year and get back on the road after spending some of his $1 million in contest winnings and battling cancer.
The Rainsville man claimed the jackpot offered by iWon.com in August.
"It's a real blessing to get a windfall like that," said Hicks, 47. "We've spent a lot of it."
Hicks bought a new pickup truck, paved the driveway, built a porch on his house and repaid his mother everything he owed her.
"It's a heckuva lot more than we had," he said. "We was broke."
Besides riches, Hicks believes he has beaten lymphoma, which was discovered in his system last summer. It's now in remission following treatment. Hicks had known about the cancer long enough to lose his job and pile up some medical bills when he hit the jackpot.
The trip to New York to claim his prize on national television had to be cut short so he could come home for a chemotherapy treatment.
"I've been feeling pretty good," Hicks said.
The only sign of sickness is a catheter in his neck.
He credits his healthy appearance to keeping his appetite through the treatments.
"I'd eat pinto beans, turnip greens, 'taters - whatever I could get in me," he said.
All around, things are looking up for the couple.
He plans to return to his truck-driving job early next year in a brand-new rig. The Hickses have been doing other kinds of traveling, too.
Mrs. Hicks and a friend took a trip to Germany. The Hickses spent some time in New Orleans, or "Sin City," as Hicks called it, as well as making a couple of jaunts to Gatlinburg, Tenn.
The couple live in a 50-year-old house where Hicks lived with his mill-worker mother and World War II veteran father. It's more comfortable now that the couple could afford to do some work on it, he said.
Now the house has vinyl siding, double-pane windows and a porch that's finished except for the red tin to be nailed onto the roof.
"We're fixing the old home place up," he said.
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