> When I asked the auctioneer afterwards why he’d let it go so cheaply, he said, “Did you see anyone trampling you to get in a bid?” I said no, I didn’t. His reply, with a smirk on his face, was, “Gotta’ know your audience in this job.”

> Well, needless to say, I got the books home and spent a few years going through them and selling some, giving some away, etc. However, that’s not the point of this story. The point was finding things in books. So, with that in mind…

Dude goes to an auction and finds books. Nobody bids on the books. Dude is amazed that the auctioneer is willing to sell him something nobody wants for a low price. Dude spends years going through those books.

I'm happy for this guy.

The call did not go well. It is certainly possible that I could have approached the phone call better, and maybe I should have tried harder, but they were suspicious, rude, and quite possibly upset. So I never took the family photos to them, and eventually disposed of them.

You really never know how people will respond to having their past thrust at them like this. Or how they'll respond to strange phone calls.

I discovered in one of them he'd written a fake dedication from the author "To ____ who could have written this far better than I".

And in the front of a copy of Tristram Shandy he'd written: "This is the 3rd copy I have bought. All the others have been STOLEN. If I ever get to read it I may find out why!"

Makes me miss him more.

Here's the strange bit: His book "Roughing It" is about his experience as a young man of moving to the West, spending a few years in Nevada and San Francisco, and then visiting The Kingdom of Hawaii where he tried surfing. In 1865.

> In one place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes and all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf-bathing. Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea, (taking a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularly prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a lightning express train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself.—The board struck the shore in three quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever master the art of surf-bathing thoroughly.

Sam embraced and exaggerated his "Southern gentleman" Mark Twain persona later in life so much, the idea that earlier in life he was in Hawaii, hanging out and surfing is quite amusing to me. Victorian surfing?? Who knew?

1) A note from one feminine-name to another assuring her that the book it was in (which was a gift, evidently, and this the accompanying card) would be a good start to her college journey, and wishing her success. It's a Modern Library copy of Plato's Republic published in IIRC the '50s. The hand and condition of the note fit with its having been gifted around that time—so, probably it was gifted new, not long after the publication date. Found it really touching for some reason, always wished (voyeuristically, I suppose) I could learn how all that turned out.

2) Set of Ex Libris stickers in the front of a multi-volume Folio Society history of England identifying it as from the library of a moderately well-known (so I gather—I'd not heard of 'em) 1980s Conservative British politician (I'm in the US, and the online listing I bought them from made no note of this). Had a title, too, Lord something-or-other. Judging from the tightness of the spines I don't think they'd ever been opened, probably just office decoration. Now that I think about it, I should see if I can track down photos of the guy's office and spot these in the background... 5-volume set, so it might be possible to pick them out even in a poor photo.

3) Late 19th century reading-size catholic bible that must have been a family bible, because it had about a hundred years of family history in it, up to IIRC the 1920s, going all the way back to "The Old Country". I've held on to it for years because I keep thinking I should do something to preserve that or get it to someone who cares, but realistically, probably never will.

I found this odd because at the time they still went for a lot of money. Inside the very large battery door[1] I found a person's name and phone number. I thought about contacting them to see if it was stolen, but first I googled the name and found a several month old local news article about the person dying in a helicopter crash of all things. Very strange.

1. https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/LSItvlpfiCKAvBIb

Hi Katie, we should meet up over tea over these images. The first image should be a simple sketch of two dudes playing football, tell the guys in graphics that the one they gave me is waaa too complex. The second image should be a chick playing tennis.

The note went on in this manner for a couple more sentences, describing all the images on the page. Because I was a blind student who used a screen reader, I had to get the PDF version from the publishing company, which I then put in a specialized ebook reading app for the blind. I strongly suspect that the editors of that book used some PDF tricks for hiding information to post notes to each other. Whether they were alt descriptions, white fonts on white background, regions shrunk to be 1px tall by 1px wide or something else entirely, I do not know. That file was intended for printing, not digital distribution, so I guess that they decided the notes didn't need removing as long as they weren't visible.

Inside I found a handwritten note from a 14 year old boy which said something to the effect of "If you like stuff like this, call me!" So I did! We ended up being friends for a couple years and exchanging C64 software and talking about nerd stuff.

2. I became obsessed with Luna Park, an influential proto-Disneyland based in Coney Island 100+ years ago. It was so popular they ran light rail out there and hundreds of thousands of people went there every weekend until it burned down about a decade later. Took a book about it on vacation to Paris. Went to a random place to read, and it had a little concourse named Luna Park. Inside it was a random coin-op machine named Luna Park, not related to the concourse from what I could tell.

3. I was studying songs by the lyricist Jule Stein, a New Yorker. One day I went into a used bookshop on the other side of the country in Newport Beach, CA just to browse. I found a bunch of books with his bookplate in them. (Nothing musical, sadly.)

[1] https://www.mscroggs.co.uk/blog/tags/books (halfway down has a photo of the Scientific American issue)

I put the book back and didn't say anything.

It was a very cozy cabin in the mountains around Rio and I was celebrating a two-year anniversary with my girlfriend. There were a few books arranged in a short rack, mostly teen stuff, but one aged book stood out. It was an English version of Gauss' Theory of the Motion of the Heavenly Bodies, apparently borrowed from an university library in the 1970s but never returned. Inside, I found two documents from 1969, a voter registration and an exam card. They belonged to a woman with a Brazilian first name and Gauss' surname. Later, I had to transfer money to the Airbnb host, and she also had Gauss as a surname.

I was pretty thrilled with the whole thing. My girlfriend was more entertained by the cabin's cat.

Months later, I was looking something up for fun. It was not a book I had touched yet, and I found the following letter hand written on a sheet of lined notebook paper. I found it oddly interesting and tried looking the names a few times. I did not get anywhere near the article story, wish I had.

“Being of sound mind and body, declare this to be my last will and testament.

To my mother, I leave nothing.

To my father, I leave Farrah and the wish to be cremated and scattered over aspen, Colorado.

To Rhonda Sollberger, I leave my cat, puffer, my rabbit, Oliver, my model house collection, and my stereo.

To Tony I leave Karen.

To Karen I leave Tony.

To Gail, I leave my teddy bear, and my rainbow sweater (She’ll grow into it soon.)

To Heather Bright, I leave my Canada Dry can, and my tequila bottle.

To Mark Frang, I leave him feeling guilty and gray skico. Also some of my ashes are to be sprinkled in his room, to remind him the sad that I am not here is all his fault.

To Adheimme Boman, I leave all the items in my play house that belong to her. 13235 is the combination.

To Todd Glass, I leave my Muppit poster (It’s just his type!)

To my Grandparents, I leave fond memories.

Signed. Jeanne Gammon Witness. Rhonda Sollberger“

[1] https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb42-3/tb132beeton-spivak.pdf

    Ambassador Douglas (in pencil)

    Geyelin,
      4511 Cath. Ave. N.W. (in pen)

In 1947, Philip L. Geyelin, then working at the Wall Street Journal, gave the book as a gift to Lewis Williams Douglas, who had recently become the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom. (Geyelin had joined the Journal in 1946 and probably would have known the book's author, Henry Hazlitt, who was also at the Journal at that time.) My hunch is that the book was given to influence Douglas's thinking about economic policies that should be adopted to restore the UK and Europe after World War II.

As it turned out, Douglas was instrumental to the passage and implementation of the Marshall Plan.

I bought it used on Amazon. It was an old library book that still had the sleeve and index cards with the date stamps of when it was last checked out.

This particular book, that I bought sight unseen from Amazon, used, for my brother's birthday had only been checked out once in its life at the library. It was last checked out on my brother's exact birthday. The book I randomly bought him had a stamp of his exact birthday, only.

Talk about going from thinking we're so small in the universe to that kind of coincidence.

Edited to fix a misspelling

When you are reading the comic book, right as you come across the scene where the heroes open the book, when you turn to the next page the same scrap of paper seen in that scene falls out of the actual book you're holding. That sent chills down my spine when I first encountered it; pretty genius.

This is sort of like the time I went to a car auction as a kid and some college students bought a lightly used stretch limo in perfect working order for (the minimum bid of) $100.

Found a diary hidden in attic and after some research was able to track down the owner and return it; they were happy and enjoyed getting it back.

I've bought many books over the years that had prior owner's names marked inside somewhere. On a few occasions I've bothered to try and identify/find the person in question. Once or twice I was successful, but I never bothered contacting them just to say "Hey, I bought this book you used to own". Well, except for one time.

I was on an Inductive Logic Programming / Prolog kick, and bought several used books on the subject. Something like two or three had all been owned by the same previous owner. I looked him up and found out that he was an academic and appeared to still be working, so I thought "what the heck" and sent him a note just to say "Hey, funny story, I bought these books and <blah, blah, blah>."

Not sure what I expected, if anything, in return, but the response I did get was quite chilly. It was something along the lines of "Oh, I donated those to a place that was supposed to be sending them to Africa" or something like that. There was definitely no sense that this individual was happy to hear from the new owner of his old books, or was interested in discussing the subject.

Which is fine. Like I said, I had no idea what to expect, and certainly would have had no right to expect any particular response. But it just goes to show... you are correct in saying

"You really never know how people will respond to having their past thrust at them like this. Or how they'll respond to strange phone calls." (or strange emails in this case)

You did the right thing by attempting to reunite them with their (presumably) priceless property. Most people likely wouldn't react this way. I know my parents lost a TON of personal items, including countless photos, when the moving company that was hired by the USAF to move them out of CA to another assignment went under. I'd imagine they'd both have been amazed, surprised, and incredibly grateful for someone to have gone through the trouble you did.

...but who knows? Perhaps there was a divorce or bad blood in that family. At least you can say for certain you have a clear conscience, though!

Over dinner we talked about what to do about this, and ultimately she added $20 more to the stash and left it in the book.

That restaurant is now gone.

At least that's what I tell myself when someone randomly finds $100 in a book...

One time in Japan there was a car sitting in front of my apartment for months, nobody used it, nobody touched it. It seemed abandoned. It definitely looked out of place due to its age as well, though it was in good shape.

Eventually me and the pals got amused, and annoyed, and started to do funny stuff you'd only do if amused and annoyed by an abandoned car. Like, trying the doors on one restless day while you wait for the yakimo hours to arrive.

Unlocked!

A bunch of sports gear, cassettes.

Hatchback?

Sports gear...uh...sexy times stuff...and uh...a purse.

A peek in the purse. My first time seeing thick bundles of cash, basically $100s! Stacks of 'em!

I watched enough movies to know that loose $100s, found loosely, may be OK to take, or even just to ask somebody about.

But bundles, in a purse, in an abandoned car, in a neighborhood where we had heard some organized crime rumors...nope.

Creepy af though. We wondered if she had run away, disappeared, what.

which book is that? do you have photos?

Do you use any tools to interpret images in other content?

The albums were full of family photos stretching over years. I tracked down the owner via facebook. She had moved to another country and -- I suspect had separated from her husband.

She was not interested in the photo albums. It seemed rather poignant. I wonder what the story was behind it.

Edit: Also, we need to hear more about this UFO book!

https://vdoc.pub/download/a-comprehensive-introduction-to-di...