A direction home: Bob Dylan album returned 48 years late
3 June 2021, 16:14
Howard Simon sent the album along with a letter to Heights Libraries apologising for his tardiness.
After nearly five decades of blowin’ in the wind, a double Bob Dylan album finally has a direction home – a man living in San Francisco has mailed the vinyl back to an Ohio library 48 years after it was supposed to be returned.
Howard Simon sent the album along with a letter to Heights Libraries apologising for his tardiness, according to a news release from the library system outside Cleveland.
He had checked out Dylan’s Self Portrait album in 1973 as an eighth-grader at a University Heights middle school.
Mr Simon said he found it years later between two other Dylan albums in his own vinyl collection.
“As a recent retiree, I am taking the opportunity to turn my attention to some of the many vignettes of life that by dint of career and family have been neglected these many years,” he wrote.
“I am returning with the letter an overdue item by my count, approximately 17,480 days overdue as of this writing.”
His letter said the album cover is a little battered after travelling with him from University Heights to San Francisco with various stops in between, but the library said the records themselves remain in “great shape”.
Mr Simon also sent the library a 175-dollar (£123) replacement fee along with an album he recorded, Western Reserve, for possible inclusion in the library’s collection.
The library bore no hard feelings – branch manager Sara Phillips said: “The funny thing about this is that we don’t charge overdue fines any more – as long as we get the item back, we see no need to penalise people.
“We’re grateful that Mr Simon returned the record. I’d said we can now call it even.”
