Have you ever bought a book or DVD or a piece of furniture and found something really strange tucked away it it? I love annotated books, so I often find funny little notes or even poems, but ever find something really odd?
I thought of this after purchasing a used copy of the novel Midnight Cowboy over amazon a couple months ago. Tucked into the pages was a single little negative of film, almost as small as a postage stamp. Holding it up to the light, I could just barely make out an image from the movie - specifically Jon Voight’s Joe sleeping in Ratso’s apartment. The things that strike me as really weird about this are: 1)the book doesn’t have any promotional materials from the movie, like stills, or a tie in cover. There’s no other negatives, nor any indication that the movie even exists, 2)Even if it were promotional, it’s not a very iconic or dynamic image. It’s too dark, and Joe doesn’t even have his eyes open. Which leads me to believe that someone might have taken a picture off their TV and tucked this single negative away for safe keeping. And that kind of gives me the creeps.
At a garage sale, I bought a vintage looking jewelry box with a Japanese painting on the top. After getting it home, I found that it had a hidden compartment, and someone had left a little hand written note inside, dated 1970. In it, the writer kept going on about some woman he wanted to ask out (the detail I remember most was her ‘groovy hair’, hand to god), something about taking her out for coffee. I guess he must have ended up with her because he kept the letter, but it struck me as rather sad sack and desperate. I’ve lost both the box and the letter now, unfortunately. I’d like to read it again and figure out why I remember it in a depressing light.
I bought an old dresser in college and it had a photograph of some young woman, I figure circa 1900ish, vintage and cool. I hung on to it for a long time, but lost track in the last couple moves.
I bought a second hand James Bond board game (it’s a pretty fun game!) and it had astronaut/cosmonaut cards inside. A kid’s collection, I suppose. Not mysterious, strange or super interesting or anything, but it was a nice surprise.
I bought a pickup truck from a straight laced Mormon accountant who was liquidating hard to move items before moving to Quantico, VA to work as a g-man. There was a small amount of marijuana in a very small bag in the owner’s manual pouch.
I bought a 10 year old Chevy Monte Carlo from a very vanilla looking insurance salesman.
In the trunk compartment where the spare tire and jack reside, I found brass knuckles, a ski mask, a machete and some bullets :eek:
Not a separate item, but I once stumbled upon a copy of Hamlet at a church book sell in which the previous owner had used a pen to change “Hamlet” to “Omelet” throughout the text. I think Mudshark ultimately purchased it and still has it lying around somewhere.
At the flea market at a local gaming con, I bought an out-of-print D&D book. I flip it open, and inside is a postcard addressed to a friend of mine. I don’t just mean it was to some guy with the same name: it had my friend’s address on it and everything. Postmark is about ten years previous. Best part is, the friend is standing right there when I find it.
It wasn’t just a case of me buying the same book my friend had previously sold, either. While he’s a gamer, he’s not into D&D, and had never owned that particular source book. Best we can figure, he sold something at the same flea some years previously, and the postcard was inside it. Someone bought it, found the postcard, used it as a bookmark in the source book, then sold the book to me.
I bought a copy of a not-unfamous volume of litcrit, dedicated by the critic to a not-unfamous author. It was just on the shelf in an undistinguished used book store.
I had occasion to twit him (the critic-author) about it a few times.
My husband and I were on a long, cross country car trip and had stopped to eat lunch at a diner in a little Kansas town whose name I can no longer remember. The church across the street from the diner was having a jumble sale, so while my husband finished up and paid, I went over to have a look. I hadn’t brought anything along to read, so I picked up a couple of used novels, paid, and off we went. When I started paging through the first book, I found a hand-written recipe entitled “Pearl’s Fresh Peach Cake”. Months later when peaches came into season, out of curiousity I decided to try the recipe. It was quite good. I have made it several times over the years. So Pearl in Kansas, thank you for sharing your recipe!
A few years ago I bought Dan Rather’s 1977 autobiography, The Camera Never Blinks, at a used book store. Inside it, there was a little paper sleeve with the ESPN logo. The sleeve held an airplane boarding pass and a hotel receipt from 1998 for Mike Adamle, who used to broadcast football games for the network and who was also a commentator on American Gladiators. The hotel receipt also has Sean Salisbury’s name on it (apparently they traveled together). Salisbury was a former NFL quarterback who became another ESPN commentator. He later became infamous for being fired from ESPN for sexual harassment.
I forgot about shit left in cars I’ve acquired. My neighbor gave me a car that his 2 daughters used for collage (thinking it was dead, been driving it since), and in the glove box were condoms and a pregnancy test kit.
I inherited a china cabinet from my Grandmother and stuck to the bottom of one of the drawers was a certificate naming her as postmaster of her town, and a second certificate closing the post office when the town was schedule for destruction (it was submerged when a dam was built).
I found a Spanish-made .45 caliber pistol under the seat of a beater pickup truck. The bluing was trashed. I refinished it and gave it to my brother who has it still, 15 years later.
I sort of collect vintage cookbooks. Several years ago, I was in a little town near an even smaller town where I’d lived for about 1.5 years as a child - found an awesome vintage cookbook at a little thrift store, nabbed it for a dollar or two, and went on my way.
During the time we lived in the little nearby town, my father waged an unsuccessful battle with cancer - he was often in the hospital in the nearest city, my mom was away with him a lot, there was a revolving band of babysitters, etc. We had the dearest next-door neighbors - the Wilkeses were retired, no children of their own, but they welcomed three little kids from next door for after-school cookies or pound cake or pie and a little extra love. More than two decades later, when I got my new-to-me old cookbook home and started flipping through, the front half of an old envelope fluttered out. On the front was the name and address of our old neighbors, and on the back was Mrs. Wilkes’ chocolate pound cake recipe. I sat there and cried for a few minutes, then started reading - found lots of notes for Mrs. W’s favorite recipes, clippings of the same from newspapers, and so forth. The single best used item I’ve ever found.
Wow, I feel so left out. In my amateur librarianing, I’ve found all sorts of scraps of paper used as bookmarks, but none of them have been all that interesting. Old photographs is about the limit of what I’ve seen.
I once did something quite outstanding with a person of note while in a building that might or might not have been a bookstore. I have since continued to revel in that glorious moment. Honestly, it was really amazing.
