50-word story

Punters laughed at Scooper.

They preferred scanning horses and scoffing cold pints. Cleaning the bar was against their code. Sculling beer, tossing butts and throwing ‘losing’ tickets.

“Leave ‘em for Scooper,” they said.

Scooper secretly laughed at the punters.

He was cleaning up, scanning losing tickets thrown by drunken tossers.

The Story Behind Scooper

Nb: This story is set during the 1980’s.

On every race track and in every town in New Zealand, there is a public bar. A place where men gather to smoke, drink and talk shit. It’s usually contained deep within the dark bowels of the grandstand or within a ramshackle lean-to with a rusty tin roof. Sawdust lines the floor.

Men gather, they gamble, and get pissed. They discard their losing ticket stubs, tossing them to the floor along with the dragged-out butts of their cigarettes.  

On every race track and in every public bar in New Zealand, there is a man. A man prepared to shift through the discarded ticket stubs, scanning for that one ticket. A winning ticket tossed asunder by a drunken punter. This man is called a Scooper, and this story is dedicated to Scoopers everywhere. Go, you winners!