Man Finds Out Late Fee for Book He Took Out in 1966

If you have school-age children, remind them often to check their rooms (and all around the rest of the house) for overdue library books—otherwise, a half-century might fly by before you know it, and they could get socked with a $2,000 late fee. Harry Krame of Fair Lawn, NJ, can attest to that feeling after digging up a tome he borrowed from Memorial Middle School when he was 13, which was … in 1966, per the AP and CBS New York. Krame, now 65, says he recently unearthed Lewis Gannet's The Family Book of Verse while cleaning out his basement, and he immediately felt a twinge of guilt.

"It lasted a few seconds," he tells CBS. "It was like, I still have [it], sorry about that." In fact, Krame was rather nervous about bringing it back to the library, but he did, joking with Dominick Tarquinio, the school's vice principal, that he couldn't divulge his name because he was "in the witness protection program." Tarquinio says all is forgiven—even the $1,934.50 late fee that racked up at 10 cents a day. "We're not looking to collect," he says, though the school's librarian is planning on using the book as Exhibit A to teach kids to return their books on time. (More library stories.)