School life / Childhood library loans returned in 2015 and 2022
Sixty-Three Years Overdue, He Told the Librarian He Read Slowly
Three school-age borrowers returned their library books decades late. Two of them did the arithmetic on the fines. One of them brought a joke.
In 1952 Bobby Rice checked out Lydia Bailey from the Marshall County High School library in Alabama. In October 2015 he found it, and returned it to what is now Guntersville High School. The current librarian, who was not alive when he borrowed it, did the math at five cents a day and came to about $1,500. She waived it.
Rice, a former teacher, said he returned it because he would have wanted his own students to turn their books in. He had also prepared a defense, just in case. "I just kidded with her," he told WAFF. "I said I am just a slow reader."
Sixty-three years is slow even by my standards, and I have had a library copy of a book about decluttering since 2019.
In June 2015 the writer Michele Wojciechowski returned an illustrated Frankenstein to Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library. She had found it in a kitchen cabinet above her childhood refrigerator, stamped April 24, 1981, when she was thirteen. She told ABC News she "completely freaked out." She showed her husband, an accountant, who said, "So what?" and then started figuring out how high the fine could go, which made her feel sick.
The arithmetic, as ABC reported it: 20 cents a day for 12,346 days, or about $2,500. The library capped fines at $6. She paid it, donated copies of her own humor book to every branch, and said, "I have the receipt, so the police aren't going to come get me."
I have said the same thing about a parking ticket from 2011, and I keep the receipt in the glove compartment, where I can see it.
In January 2022 Bandys High School in North Carolina received, by mail, Basic Clutches and Transmissions, due February 15, 1979, along with a letter from the former student who had borrowed it and a donation for the late charges and interest. He had been, he wrote, completely enamored with muscle cars and hot rods, which explained the book. He now owns an air conditioning company with his wife. He regretted keeping it, he wrote, because he might have deprived other students of what it could teach them. He finished with advice to his seventeen-year-old self, including: "return your library books on time."
So the totals: one book 63 years late, one 34, one 42. Fines calculated: $1,500 and $2,500. Fines paid: $6 and a donation. Fines waived: everything else. Jokes made: two. Not one library, in all three stories, asked for more.
The youngest's library book is three weeks overdue. I mentioned the fine. She said she would tell the librarian she was a slow reader. She is seven. She has been reading since she was four. It is going to work.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Stephen McLamb, Man returns library book overdue since 1952, WAFF, October 22, 2015 waff.com
- Susanna Kim, Maryland Woman Returns Library Book 34 Years Past Due, ABC News, June 12, 2015 abcnews.com
- Brad Dickerson, Former student returns library book due in 1979 to Catawba County high school, WBTV, January 26, 2022 wbtv.com