Don't Overdue It

Funny. We were just talking about overdue library books here the other day, and now comes this story from Northern California about a really REALLY overdue book finally coming home.

Chris Kreiden, the director of the Saint Helena library, says, "I’m afraid to touch it, but I can show it to you. Let’s see. Oops, it's falling apart so it doesn't have a spine anymore.” 

Of course it's falling apart! You will be too, when you reach 141 years of age. 

This tome is entitled “A History of the United States,” by Benson Lossing, and it was published in 1892, and found a safe home at the Saint Helena Library until...

"All of us are just, you know, wondering where the book could have been for so long, you know, from being checked out in 1927,” Kreiden said. “And actually, none of us have seen a library book that was checked out in 1892 or anything else. And to have it be from this library from that far back is really incredible."

A history book from the 1800s, checked out in the 1900s, returned in the 2000s! Now that's history, doggone it, or whatever they said in 1927.

A mysterious man (isn't it always?) sidled into the library the other day, and returned the book "with little explanation," according to the staff.

I mean, if someone asked you what you had been doing during the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean and Viet Nam wars, and man's exploration of space, what would you say?

That man's explanation is also overdue.