NICK EICHER, HOST: Sometimes life imitates Seinfeld.
AUDIO: An overdue book from 1971?! Do you know how much that comes to? That’s a nickel a day for 20 years. That’s gonna be $50,000!
EICHER: Yeah. Not quite.
But back in October, what happened to fictional Jerry happened to the real Robert Stroud of Shreveport, Louisiana.
Samantha Bonnette of the Shreve Public Library explained to KSLA TV:
BONNETTE: A patron of ours was cleaning out his mother’s home and he came across the book, saw that it was a library book that still appeared to be checked out and decided to bring it back to the library.
EICHER: His mom was 11 in 1934 when she checked out “Spoon River Anthology.” So it’s been overdue about 84-1/2 years. Good thing Kramer wasn’t doing the math, or he’d be over $200,000 in fines.
No, the Shreve library caps fines at $3.
But Stroud, even though he didn’t owe it, tallied everything, I mean, everything, down to the last nickel. He presented the public library with a check for $1,542.65.
As a donation.
It’s The World and Everything in It.
