About 12 miles from the Post-Gazette Pavilion in Burgettstown, Penn., karma and good fortune and all things benevolent suddenly appeared in the form of a crisp, green Andy Jackson. That’s right, my biggest-ever scratch-off Lotto win: $20. After six Phish shows in eight days, I was newly rich.

We pulled into the lot just shy of 4 p.m. Was it simply fate that “Harpua” had been in my head for the past six weeks? No way they’ll play that. Or “Camel Walk,” or “Cool it Down,” or “McGrupp,” or “Crosseyed,” or even some crazy Fishman cover.

Whoops.

We finally reached seats that weren’t ours just before the band came on at 8 p.m. There would be no “All of These Dreams” or “Anything but Me” on this particular muggy Tuesday evening. The rollicking bluegrass breakout “Daniel (Saw the Stone)” was over before I really even knew what was happening. Follow that up with a kick-ass “Camel Walk” and a fun-loving, 12-minute “Gotta Jibboo,” and you’ve got yourself a whale of a triumvirate at the onset.

Velvet Underground’s “Cool it Down” then brought the house down. I danced with reckless abandon, all the while trying to reconcile the whole “are they really playing this?” feeling that Phish seems to generate on a regular basis.

The rest of the first set was no slouch, either: Six of the 10 songs hadn’t been played since the hiatus. Play “Fee” and “Timber Ho” and the Gamehenge staple “McGrupp” at every show and not an enemy will you make, I always say. But that’s only when I talk like Yoda.

Even the Jedi master himself couldn’t have envisioned a “Crosseyed and Painless” second-set opener. The Talking Heads bastion is, after all, in a class almost by itself - only a handful of other covers garner as much esteem. Not since Big Cypress had the band played it for this long (34 minutes, in case you’re keeping score at home).

Next thing I remember is sitting down after a high-energy “Brother” two songs later, and thinking I really wanted the next song to get me out of my chair in a hurry. I wanted to be impressed. I wanted to be wowed.

“Oom pah pah, oom pah pah, oom pah pah aaaaaahhhhhh!!!”

Wow. Impressive.

Phish fans don’t yearn for many songs like they do for “Harpua.” This had now officially become the best Phish show I’d ever seen.

This particular “Harpua” brought with it, among other things, the dulcet “Bittersweet Motel” (which includes the fitting line: “halfway between Erie and Pittsburgh”) and a Fishman-led cover of Elvin Bishop’s 1970s ballad “I Fooled Around and Fell in Love.” Only at a Phish show can a drummer in a dress with the worst voice this side of Carl Lewis send a crowd of some 20,000 people into an absolute frenzy.

Tack on a forceful and seamless “David Bowie” and a generally pleasant “Farmhouse” encore, and this show is, as they say, the stuff of legends. And I was hungry.

Where’d I put that 20 bucks?

- MICHAEL BERGER