Superstition

147

My Weird World of Numbers

The significance first hit me when my car skidded on some black ice and ran into the corner of a concrete bridge. Directly in front of the bent left fender of my car was a sign that read Mile 147.

The car was still running, but the left front wheel was bent, and the whole front end was askew, so I drove back to the army base slowly through the cold Indiana winter. That gave me time to think about numbers.

I was on interstate 70. I was in the US Army at the time, in the 74th Army Band. My parents’ phone number ended in 6774. I had graduated from high school in 1974. My social security number ended in, um, never mind, but it fits right in. My birthday is the 28th, which is 4 times 7.

I started remembering all the times that 4, and 7, sometimes with a 1, figured into many of the important things in my life. Growing up, I lived 7 houses away from Route 4. My basketball jersey number in grade school was 4, and I remember thinking the number 4 just felt right for me. The number I had to stand on in basic training was number 147. Before I joined the army, I weighed 147 pounds for several years.

The next time I drove home, I realized that I got off the I-70 at exit 47 to Route 4.

Google Maps image

That was about the time it all started to scare me. I started seeing 4 and 7 and often 147 everywhere I looked. I had a saxophone with a serial number ending in 5774. When I bought something, either the price was $7.41 or the change was 74 cents, or some combination. I started seeing my numbers everywhere.

It just kind of screams at me, you know?

I read some numerology stuff where they add the digits together, or assign numbers to letters to get your personal number. My name number is 7 by one method and 44 by another. My destiny number is 7.

4 squared is 16, and 1+6=7

7 squared is 49 and 4+9=13 and 1+3=4

No other digits have this relationship. Yes, I spent way too much time thinking about all this.

Four Peaks. That’s what everyone calls it. Four Peaks. Clever name.

There are some slightly interesting facts associated with combinations of these numbers, which you can skip over, unless you’re obsessive like me.

14 is the number of days in a fortnight, and the number of pounds in a stone, the number of the Moonlight Sonata, and the number of toes on a Guinea pig.

17 is the seventh prime number which makes it the fourth super-prime as seven is itself prime, says Wikipedia, although I have very little idea what all that has to do with me. There are 17 syllables in a haiku. Dozens of songs are titled “17,” or “Seventeen.”

47 is the atomic number of silver. Pomona College in California has gotten itself connected to the number 47 in a very strange way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/47_(number) — and then scroll down to Pomona College. Star Trek is involved. Funny stuff.

Republic P-47 Thunderbolt — Wikipedia

My grandmother was a Rosie the Riveter in WWII, building parts for the P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft.

74 is the atomic number of tungsten. Interstate 74 runs from Indianapolis, where I was in the Army Band, to Cincinnati, where I should have gone to college instead of joining the army, but didn’t because I was stupid.

147 is the highest possible break in a single frame of snooker, about which I know almost nothing. If you look at Wikipedia, you will see a bunch of gobbledygook that means nothing to me, but it mentions 147 is a mathematically magic number.

See it? Far right upper corner? 174! Ha! No, those are not my cats. Not exactly. Nor is it my yard.

174 has some more gobbledygook about semi-meanders and invertible matrices, and English draughts or checkers factor in.

417 and 471 are nothing particularly special, except they appear in my life rather often.

Dragnet TV Series Opening Frame -Wikipedia

714 is the number on the badge in Dragnet. 714 is how many home runs Babe Ruth hit in his career. 714 is the number on Lemon Quaalude pills, and “714” is the name of Track 7 on the album “Nothing is Sacred.” by the Godz, from Ohio, my home state. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFaEJMEEmFA

741 is the number of a common op amp, LM741 by Texas Instruments. I am a retired avionics tech and electronics hobbyist. I have used 741 op amps a couple times.

Texas Instruments LM741 data sheet

Boeing 747 Photo by Author

747 is a gigantic aircraft made by Boeing. I have worked on them in my career as an aircraft mechanic. Really frightfully big.

This was a while ago.

Angel Numbers.

Pythagoras believed that numbers have real-life powers and magical meanings. He also believed that beans contained human souls, which is all the excuse I need to not eat them. Beans. Yuck. Except chocolate beans. Yum!

Doreen Virtue formalized the Angel Number concept in a series of books that I have not read. Probably the universe is laughing behind my back because it has been giving me the secret code all this time and I am not getting it. Angel Numbers. I might have to look into that someday.

This was a long time ago. I now have 5 responses.

Nobody cares about poor Mexico.

Whatever the case, these numbers have been hanging around my whole life, taunting me, haunting me, making me crash my car into the bridge. I don’t know why, or what it means, or if I am just being silly and noticing things because I am looking for them. Maybe it is just coincidence. Maybe God is calling my name. Maybe angels are trying to tell me that I am a being of light — a spirit in a material world. (That is what a psychic told me once when I asked about my numbers.)

The VFW Post Down the Street

I still see the numbers randomly pop up. I live off the exit 47 from my nearest freeway. My anniversary is 7/14. My local Domino’s Pizza is store number 7674. My nearest Home Depot store is 470, and the next closest one is number 417. The current price of a donut and chocolate milk at the Circle K, which is my normal stop on the way home from a band gig these days, is $4.71, and on and on.

Of course I used correct change. Otherwise my change would have been 29 cents, which is 4x7+1.

Aircraft Tachometer Showing 147 Hours. I was an aircraft mechanic.

This seems to happen a couple times a day.

My life is so pathetic.

Thanks for reading. I would appreciate claps in the quantities of 4, 7, 14, 17, or 47, please. Just because. Or just 1. Whatever.

In other spheres of influence, I’m kind of a big deal.