by Bill Keaggy
MILK
EGGS
VODKA
grocery lists
lost and found
BILL KEAGGY
MILK EGGS VODKA. Copyright © 2007 by Bill Keaggy. Printed in Singapore. All rights reserved. No other part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by HOW Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc., 4700 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45236. (800) 289-0963. First paperback edition, 2011.
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Distributed in Canada by Fraser Direct, 100 Armstrong Avenue, Georgetown, Ontario, Canada L7G 5S4, Tel: (905) 877-4411. Distributed in the U.K and Europe by F+W Media International, Brunel House, Newton Abbot, Devon, TQ12 4PU, England. Tel: (+44) 1626-323200, Fax: (+44) 1626-323319. E-mail: postmaster@ davidandcharles.co.uk. Distributed in Australia by Capricorn Link, P.O. Box 704, Windsor, NSW 2756 Australia, Tel: (02) 4577-3555.
The food facts that appear on the pages of this book were adapted primarily from Chef James T. Ehler’s web site, www.foodreference.com, and reprinted here with his permission.
Consistent with the random manner in which they were found, the shopping lists in this book are presented anonymously, except where noted and with permission. That said, no connections to any individual persons or businesses are stated or implied regardless of how the lists are displayed. Full names and other identifiable pieces of information about the authors of these found lists have been discreetly cropped out.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58180-941-1
ISBN-10: 1-4403-1201-X
Edited by: Amy Schell Designed by: Grace Ring media Production coordinated by: Greg Nock
Author photo by Liam Keaggy. Photograph on page 130 by Dalyce E. Burgess. Photographs on page 79 by Bill Keaggy. Photographs on pages 216, 218, 220, 222, and 224 by Jerry Naunheim, Jr.
DEDICATION
To Liam (who likes pickles), Sorena (who likes bananas), Diane (who likes goat cheese), Dad (who likes Bud Light) and Mom (who likes Gatorade)—from me (who likes corn dogs).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A sincere thank you to: my family, for putting up with (and enjoying) my odd hobbies and interests; my parents, for putting up with (and encouraging) my odd hobbies and interests; my publisher, for being interested in (and publishing) my odd hobbies and interests; and you, for picking up this book and—I hope—pursuing some odd hobbies and interests of your own.
The Grocery List Collection wouldn’t be what it is without the following people. Gigantic thank yous go to: Mary-Margaret Ries, Nancy Bea Miller, Susan Everett, Tara Young, M.K.M., Kathy Keaggy Smith and Jeff Appel. I’d also like to thank everyone who has contributed to the collection since it started ten years ago. There are too many of you to list here but I am grateful for your help. All of you are part of this book, whether your list made it in or not. Thank you!
And these good folks helped me out with this project in one indispensable way or another: Diane Keaggy, Rosanne Toroian, James T. Ehler, Ben Kiel, Jerry Naunheim, Jr., Mark Lewman, Tucker Shaw, Kitty Fipilele, Michael A. Kahn, Chuck Groth, Kimberly Williams, Rudy Charisma, Jennifer Jacobberger, Michelle Lofthus, Teresa Stewart Sitz, Don from Maryland, Rose McKee, Kristine Rakowsky, Jim Coudal, Dalyce E. Burgess and Jeffrey Yamaguchi. Thank you.
And of course, thanks to the talented folks at F+W, who realized how much fun scraps of paper and smart-ass comments can be: Megan Patrick, Amy Schell, Grace Ring, Suzanne Lucas and the rest of the crew.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill Keaggy is a collector, maker and breaker of things. He has a healthy appreciation for the beauty and absurdity in small things forgotten: Chairs tossed in alleys, papers found in old books, trees growing out of abandoned buildings and, of course, grocery lists left in shopping carts. His projects are all about the life behind the things people leave behind.
His web sites, Keaggy.com and Grocerylists.org, have been described as genius, useless, inspiring, stupid, beautiful, profound and a complete waste of time. An Ohio native, he lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with his wife Diane and their children Liam and Sorena.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
1. Just Plain Funny
2. Emphasis!
3. Chides and Asides
4. Paaar-ty!
5. Sad Grocery Lists
6. Badd Spellrs
7. The Grocer’s Apostrophe
8. Creative Recycling
9. Doodles and Noodles
10. Just One Thing
11. You’re So Vague
12. Organized Lists
13. Ye Olde Style
14. Planet of Food
15. Healthy (and Hygienic) Lists
16. Eating Wrong
17. Unsure of Myself
18. Other Lists
19. All-American Lists
20. What’s Cookin’?
Epilogue
Index
Foreword
My grandfather was an inveterate list-maker. He’d write something down on a scrap of paper and would never look at it again. For him, the physical act of writing was enough to elevate the note to a more permanent status in his mind. He’d say, “I’m not writing this down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.”
The authors of the grocery lists in this collection certainly needed to “remember something now.” The importance of the lists themselves however, is something less than permanent, as evidenced by the fact that thousands of them have been casually discarded for Bill Keaggy and his colleagues to scoop up and collect. Lucky for us.
I’ve been watching Bill from afar as both his collection and his obsession have grown. What strikes me as most important about these lists is not really the people who wrote them, or what’s on them, or even the people who found them. What is interesting to me is how, upon seeing a list for the first time, we immediately start to imagine the story behind it. It’s like joining a movie halfway through. We can’t help but start to piece together a narrative from these barest of outlines, imagining what happened before the list was made and more frequently, what happened after the shopping was complete. As I made my way through this book for the first time, I felt as if I were reading a highly compact anthology of short stories.
Most of the time we write grocery lists to and for ourselves. They’re highly personal that way, more like diaries than like postcards. They’re meant for our own eyes only and they’re written in a shorthand that mimics the way we think. (And for some of these lists, that’s a pretty scary thought.)
As objects they’re interesting too, and a fairly sad commentary on the state of American penmanship. But more than anything else, it’s the collecting of all of them all in one place that’s the most fun. The wise-cracking marginalia guides us through, and each page brings us something unexpected, and more often than not, a laugh.
Now what was that other thing I was going to say about Bill’s book? Hmm. Perhaps I should have made a list. Enjoy.
Jim Coudal Coudal.com
INTRODUCTION
Making lists is a uniquely human activity, like watching pornography or Googling yourself. (Don’t do those at the same time!)
Lists tell us a lot about our neighbors, our friends, our ancestors, our species and ourselves. First, lists remind us that we are obsessive. Or maybe that we are forgetful, I forget. Regardless, lists—especially lists of things we want and need, such as groceries—provide tiny glimpses into private lives. They’re usually quite honest reflections of a person. Simple needs, amusing quirks and sundry cures for infirmities listed and checked off.
The oldest surviving grocery list that I know of is from circa A.D. 80, found at the site of an old Roman fort in the northern U.K. Someone needed pork, bread, wine and oil. As of the moment I am writing this, the most recent found grocery list in my collection is from St. Louis, Missouri, circa A.D. 2006, found in the street in front of the Jay International Foods store. Someone needed lunchmeat, poultry, bread, olive oil and several other items. Almost two thousand years passed between the crafting of those lists, yet they are nearly identical. The basic necessities of complete strangers left behind for us to peek in on.
Most found lists are anonymous—just scribbled words on a page. But we can relate to them. I need toilet paper just like you. You need banannas. Bannanas. Banananas. Bnanans? Bannas. Bananas. Hmmm. More on that later.
These found grocery lists are rare specimens. I have a collection from around the world that numbers in the thousands, but it has taken years of hunting and gathering. People are very protective of their grocery lists. I call it selective littering. Seems most folks would sooner dump their car ashtray in the grocery’s parking lot or toss a week’s worth of soda cans and fast food bags on the ground outside the store (and they do) rather than leave their list in a shopping cart. It’s because grocery lists are supposed to be private. Never mind that all of us have to go through the checkout in public. Our lists are supposed to be private, and that’s why it’s so enjoyable to look through them—unless one of the lists happens to be yours. Then it might not be so enjoyable, because if there’s one thing I enjoy more than finding a lost grocery list—it’s making fun of it.
Bill Keaggy www.grocerylists.org
St. Louis, Missouri
Summer 2006
1. JUST PLAIN FUNNY
your list makes me laugh
Most grocery lists are not very interesting. Milk. Bread. Toilet paper. Very few lists stand out and make us say, “Whoa. That’s weird.” Or, “My, how amusing.” These lists have a little bit of “whoa” and “amusing” in them. But of course I always laugh out loud when I see a list featuring “hookers and blow.”
“Oreo B Interdental Refills”—now I don’t know what an interdental refill is, but I am sure they are more fun to use if they’re made out of Oreos. Also, “bourbin.”
Just what strange things does this person have planned? And who ever heard of diet coffee?
Worcestershire sauce can last five to ten years unopened, two years once opened.
Well, uh, maybe they were shopping for fishing tackle and a hair dryer?
The famous “Uncle Sam” character is said to be modeled after a meatpacker from Troy, New York. His name was Sam Wilson and during the War of 1812 he shipped meat to the government and stamped the crates “U.S. Beef.” The soldiers took to calling it “Uncle Sam’s Beef.”
It’s good to be organized when grocery shopping (see chapter 12)—but it’s another thing entirely to be organized AND mischievous. This one’s like a game: Find the funny items!
Clarence Birdseye invented commercially available frozen foods in 1923.
Your standard, run-of-the-mill, incredibly hilarious PMS shopping list.
“Tush cleaner” (!)
Swanson invented the TV dinner in the early 1950s because the company had an excess of holiday turkey that it needed to sell.
Hmmm. Where to start? With the misspelling of aspirin? With the demand for light shirts with no pockets? With the fact that this is the first list I’ve seen that includes undies AND fish? Or maybe with the subtle request for a million dollars.
“Next time you go shopping, please get some buttmilk. I like the store-bought kind much better than my homemade stuff.”
Just 1.5% of the billions of coupons printed every year get used.
Dude, I’m like totally serious. Don’t forget the chips.
The odd thing about this list is that this kid spells better than most adults, although the adults probably have fewer cavities.
Ice cream tends to be the No. 1 item on college students’ grocery lists at the beginning of the semester.
This yummy list of food was just so tempting that she had to taste it! Or maybe she just put on too much lipstick.
Some commercial apple orchards use up to two dozen different pesticides.
Asparagus is the most humorous vegetable because you can spell it “ass-pair-agus.” And it makes your pee smell funny.
Americans eat about 35 pounds of tomatoes every year, but more than half of that is from sauces and ketchup.
Little Timmy’s birthday fiesta was not as much fun as Uncle Lothar thought it would be when he made this list of party favors.
Well, let’s be honest, who would want “pants (the kind that rub)”?
There are more than 100,000 varieties of rice.
At least it doesn’t say. “Gin (for work).”
Baked beans are a Native American invention, historically made with maple syrup and bear fat. It’s likely the Pilgrims borrowed the recipe and changed it to use molasses and pork fat Instead.
Really, honesty is the policy. It’s OK. You like junk food.
Cool! a drunken smoking milkshake party.
The average American drinks about twenty-five gallons of milk per year.
Item 18: “Brocolli wokly.” Duh, it should be spelled “broccoli wokly.” Are you stupid or what?
Licorice root contains a substance called glycyrrhizin that is fifty times sweeter than ordinary sugar.
The distinction between Bud Light and “good beer” is pretty funny. And this list was found in St. Louis, Anheuser-Busch’s hometown!
When they ggo to the ggrocery store, I gguess they always gget a lot of hot doggs and hamburgger.
Most milk is 88% water.
2. EMPHASIS!
blatant abuse of the exclamation point
Sometimes it’s just not enough to write something down. Sometimes you really have to make sure one or more of the items you need gets purchased. Sometimes you just want to celebrate the wonder of cheese!!!
CANDY!
Eggcited about eggs!
Fifty gallons of maple sap are needed to make one gallon of maple syrup.
And Don’t you forget it!
The first step is admitting you have a caffeine problem. I’m going to take this as an admission.
There are 400 varieties of natural cheeses.
A subtle, courteous hint that if you forget to buy me a lighter again I will burn you alive. At least that’s how I interpret this subtle notation.
Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.
Well, I like pie too. I like it twice as big as all other foods.
When you lose power to your home, food will stay safe in an unopened refrigerator for 4-6 hours. Fully-stocked freezers will keep the food for two days and a half-stocked freezer for 12 hours.
This is going to be the worst Halloween ever.
I don’t have a drinking problem. I just like to underline vodka. twice.
In 1920, 70% of Americans baked their own bread.
Cold Cutts.
A Maryland man once bought one grain of sugar from his local grocery and paid for it with a $100 bill. All because the sign said, “Take as much or as little as you need.”
Who loves Black Russian Cake? They love Black Russian Cake!
1933: Prohibition ends and Ernest & Julio Gallo wines are introduced.
3. CHIDES AND ASIDES
this note’s for you
While lists may be an effective way to record and communicate needs, often a note is required. Though usually used for clarification or emphasis, sometimes the note is to make sure something ISN’T bought. Or it might be a threat from your significant other, a plea from your kid or a reminder from your mother. Sometimes the note may even be sweet and make you smile. Until you realize you forgot the bread.
Oh, goodness, how many times have I heard that most dreaded of phrases, “If you buy more rice I’ll punch you”?
OK, I can think of a lot of other things I might want. T
hanks!
Large supermarkets can carry roughly 25,000 to 45,000 items. Seventy years ago most groceries stocked fewer than 1,000 items.
Clean and courteous!
A grocery store in Oklahoma City provided the first shopping carts for customers in 1937.
“Then after that, Mandy, we all want to go to a remedial spelling class.”
When Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin sat down to eat meals on the moon, their food packets contained things like bacon squares, grape punch and date fruitcake.