The Giant Receipt
Willoughby Mills, Delaware · Monument · est. 1969
A 34-foot enameled-steel replica of an itemized cash-register receipt, erected in 1969 to commemorate Delaware's absence of a sales tax. Its eleven line items reproduce, at 22-to-1 scale, an actual purchase made at Pomeroy's Variety on March 3, 1969, concluding with the line the monument exists to celebrate: TAX $0.00.
History
The Giant Receipt was proposed in 1967 after Willoughby Mills hardware merchant Foster Grimsley returned from a motoring vacation through Pennsylvania described in Retail Merchants Association minutes as having left him 'visibly changed' by the sales taxes he had paid en route. Grimsley moved that the Association erect 'a permanent public statement on the subject,' and the matter was referred to the Subcommittee on Commemorative Signage, which deliberated for eleven months.
The Subcommittee's final report recommended not a statue or obelisk but a receipt, reasoning that 'the receipt is where the citizen meets the state, and in Delaware the state does not show up.' A ceremonial purchase was conducted at Pomeroy's Variety on March 3, 1969: eleven sensible household items, including clothespins, a flue brush, and a garden hose, totaling $9.44 with tax of $0.00. The original paper receipt was notarized the same afternoon and placed in a safe deposit box at Farmers Bank, where it remains.
Construction of the enlarged replica cost $28,500, raised through merchant subscriptions at $75 per line item, with the TAX line reserved for the Association president. The monument was dedicated on July 12, 1969, before an estimated crowd of 400, with remarks limited by prior agreement to the reading aloud of the receipt in full.
In March 1984 a windstorm delaminated three of the enamel panels, and the subsequent repainting inadvertently omitted line item 7, 'GARDEN HOSE $1.19.' The omission went formally unnoticed for eleven years until a 1995 letter from Eunice Ostrander, the cashier who had rung the original sale, prompted a full audit of the monument against the notarized original. The line was restored at a cost of $6,200, and Mrs. Ostrander was given a key to the interpretive kiosk.
“People stand under the zero and take a picture. Same zero every time. I don't tire of it, exactly.”
Local Legends
Residents maintain that the flue brush purchased in the 1969 ceremonial transaction was never used and is still in its bag in the basement of the Grimsley building. The Grimsley family has described this as 'broadly accurate.'
It is commonly said that on very cold mornings the enamel panels contract audibly, producing a ticking sound residents refer to as 'the register.' The Association's maintenance contractor attributes this to ordinary thermal movement and has declined to give it a name.
Some in Willoughby Mills insist the monument is one inch taller than the water tower in Kenton was in 1969, and that this was intentional. No surviving Association member will confirm the measurement or the motive.
The Controversy
In 1991 the county briefly assessed the monument as commercial signage, which would have made it taxable — an outcome the Association's counsel described in a filing as 'thematically unacceptable.' The Association argued that a receipt is a record of a transaction rather than an inducement to one, and a hearing officer agreed after a site visit lasting eight minutes. The monument is now classified as 'a civic record, enlarged,' and both parties consider the matter closed.
Visitor Reviews
It is a large receipt. The items are legible from across the street, and my husband read them aloud, which I had not requested. The clothespins are line item 2.
I bring every out-of-state relative here first. They laugh at the drive over and then they get quiet at the tax line. Works every time. Ohio people especially.
Reviewing the crosswalk mainly. The button gives you plenty of time to cross and look up at the receipt at the same time, which is not true everywhere. Monument also good.
I don't know why the zero got to me the way it did. Thirty-four feet of itemized ordinary life and then nothing owed at the end. I bought nothing the whole drive home. Didn't need to.
Gift Shop
Currently in stock
- Replica receipt (actual size, notarization not included)ask at desk
- Souvenir pencil (blunt)ask at desk
- 'TAX $0.00' iron-on patchask at desk
- Enamel pin: line item 7 (garden hose)ask at desk
- Commemorative coin purse (sold empty)ask at desk
- Postcard: 'The Zero at Noon'ask at desk