South St. Paul library record returned 5 decades late, fines waived
Record returned to library 5 decades later
A South St. Paul man checked out a Cat Stevens record as an eighth-grade student in 1976. After trying to return it last week, he learned that luckily the $5,250 in fees he would have been charged at a former rate have been waived.
SOUTH ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - A South St. Paul man's record collection included what could have been a very expensive mistake.
FOX 9 got him to face the music and found out how he avoided a massive fine.
You can check out
And you can forget to leave:
The scene is Minnesota in 1976. Walter Mondale is elected vice president. Gas is $0.59 a gallon.
The legal drinking age rises to 19 years old, and an album costs about $7 — too much for music-loving 14-year-old Zef Miller to afford. But a friend helped him find vinyl.
"After school we went to the library, and I was like, ‘wow, they have albums here,'" said Miller, now 63.
The eighth grader used his card responsibly and returned everything on time, but for some reason he lost track of Cat Stevens’ Greatest Hits.
"Apparently that one somehow got left in the wayside, got stacked up between a couple of other albums," Miller said.
So, Cat napped in a box for almost 50 years. For most of that time, Miller didn't even have a record player.
Wild World Update
Father-son moment:
Flash forward to 2025.
The boy has become a man, a father and grandfather. And his grandchildren found the old records, practically forgotten in a closet.
"It was 'What are these grandpa?'" Miller said. "Like, ‘Oh, these are albums. This is how you used to listen, you know 50 years ago, people used to listen to music on this.’"
But something was off with one album.
It didn’t have the normal cover, and it had a little plastic pocket that once held a library circulation card. The realization prompted a father and son moment.
"And that's when my son said, 'Oh, you really should return that. You know? What are you doing with it?'" Miller said.
A sheepish return
Run it back:
The old South St. Paul library is now empty, so Miller went to nearby Kaposia to test the waters.
"He needed to get a card and he kind of said under his breath that he might have a record at home that he's had for a while," said Kaposia Library Branch Manager Honora Rodriguez.
"I didn't know if I was still on file or anything like that," Miller said. "Well, they never heard me and I went ‘good.’"
He tried to return the album the next week, but Dakota County libraries don’t carry vinyl anymore.
And they don’t collect fines as of last year, but when they did, it was 30 cents a day, so he would’ve owed about $5,250. Instead, he took a funny photo and got to keep the album for free.
What's next:
He’s listened to it more in the last week than ever before.
"I think I like it more now than I did when I originally checked it out," Miller said. "I think I'm going to try to maybe go get a decent record player, so I can start actually listening to these on vinyl."
A wild world, indeed.