Something I Found

While reading a book, The Swimming Pool Library, for another English class, I flipped to the next chapter and found this gently wedged in the spine.

This receipt, dated August 21, 1994, seems like a very interesting and unexpected artifact from the past. I love finding things like this and searching for places that may or may not still exist. In this case, I used a simple Google search to determine that this address, 6604 Mayfield Road, is in Cleveland, Ohio, and that it is no longer a Rini-Rego, as it states on this receipt, but has become a different pharmacy/convenience store, Giant Eagle. The phone number and address, however, remain the same.

I think about how long ago this receipt was printed - I was only two years old at the time! It seems incredible that the receipt has survived so long, especially in such a clean and unwrinkled condition.

When I find little artifacts like this, I also tend to think about who it was who shopped at this store on that particular day. Why did they buy what they bought? This person bought "produce" (not specified exactly what kind of produce), bacon, two crimini mushrooms, and cream cheese. Were these the ingredients to a meal this person planned to cook later that day? Does he just really like mushrooms? And why did he place it between the pages of this book? If he used it as a bookmark, why is it in such pristine condition?

Interestingly, there are things we can know almost certainly based on what we can observe; for example, that the person who bought these things paid $11.00 in cash and received $0.38 in change. We also know (almost) for sure the day he bought them, the time (it says 10:00AM on the receipt), and where he bought them. However, there are also conjectures or assumptions we can make based on the information we have. For instance, we do not know the gender of the person who shopped here. We could guess that it may have been a man, since the book would seem to have a predominantly male audience (but I do not know that for sure, either). Also, we know that the store is located near a major highway, so we could assume that he drove to the store. However, we don't know if he was on his way somewhere else - even on a road trip - or if he was just going there and going home. (It would seem that he was going home afterwards, since the things he bought are more ingredient-like than stand-alone snacks.)

Even more fascinating, I found this receipt in the same book, nestled in some of the first pages.

Apparently, this person (perhaps the same person), went to a Holiday Inn (we don't know where) and bought a "sunrise" (maybe a kind of traditional bacon-and-eggs breakfast?) and a coffee. He also bought an LA Times. Does that suggest that he was not in Ohio anymore, but in California? Maybe.

This receipt is dated October 13, but does not include a year. It does say that there was only one person, so we may guess that he was traveling alone. Maybe he was on a business trip? We may never know.