Leo Gillick
Thankfully, late fees are usually capped; otherwise, this book, returned 82 years late, would have bankrupted the lender. Instead, it was gratefully accepted, and a rather nice note was found inside.
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The book was initially loaned in July of 1943 to a woman in San Antonio. The book was only supposed to be a 28-day non-renewable, but instead, it disappeared from the library shelves for 82 years.
When the library received the book, taken out before the end of the Second World War, they were delighted at such a relic. The long-lost loan, titled, Your Child. His Family and Friends by Frances Bruce Strain is now on display.
The long-overdue library book arrived in the post from an unknown sender. Behind the front cover, there was a note from the folks who found it after all this time. They had been digging through their late grandmother’s belongings when they came across the book.
“I hope there is no late fee for it because Grandma won’t be able to pay for it anymore,” they wrote. Thankfully for them, the San Antonio Public Library dropped late fees in 2021, so they’ll avoid a lifetime of library debt.
A Guidebook For A Past Age
The returned book is back where it belonged, in the library after 82 years. But why did Grandma keep it for so many years? That remains a mystery. Frances Bruce Strain, the author, wrote the kind of lifestyle guidebooks that shock modern audiences.
Titles such as The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book: Twelve Steps to a Happy Marriage and Sex Guidance in Family Life Education offer a fascinating insight into 1900s approaches to complex familial social sciences. Now, they will seem wildly outdated. However, at the time, they were seen as sound guidance.
The elderly lady who never returned her library book probably used it throughout her life. In fact, the very children who returned it may have been brought up with it. The book is truly a relic of the past.
As a result, the returned library book has been put on display. It can be viewed in the lobby of the central library. The book will then be sold to provide funds for local charities.
