Last month, while visiting my dad’s house in Toms River, I stumbled upon a time capsule wedged between old high school yearbooks and forgotten issues of Popular Science—a long-lost treasure from my childhood: a thick, dog-eared Commodore 64 programming book I had borrowed from the Ocean County Library in 1984.
At the time, I was 12 years old, a hardcore computer science buff obsessed with anything that had a chip, screen, or circuitry. I used to tear apart Mattel handheld sports games just to see how they worked, poking around transistors and resistors with the fascination of a young scientist. When my parents got me the Intellivision computer add-on for my gaming console, it lit the fuse. That led to the Coleco Adam, then the almighty Commodore 64—the machine that would teach me BASIC and open the door to a life in technology.
That old programming book was my bible. I poured over every command and line of code, learning the language of the future before many even understood what a home computer could do. That foundation led to college studies in computer science, a tour in the U.S. Marine Corps as a communications specialist, and later, a career that placed me right at the edge of the dot-com boom.
I eventually became the regional director of a global information services and online media company. Later, I founded my own businesses and grew them into successful ventures. Today, I own and operate Shore News Network, one of New Jersey’s largest media outlets.
But standing in my father’s attic holding that old book, I suddenly had a dilemma.
The Ocean County Library probably hadn’t thought about that book since the late Reagan administration. The card in the back—remember those checkout cards with the librarian’s initials and due dates?—was faded, the ink smudged. There was just a lone Dewey Decimal sticker. Just my ancient teenage handwriting, still penciled in the margins. Part of me wanted to keep it. It belonged on my shelf of vintage computer manuals, a personal artifact from my digital journey.
But deep down, I knew it wasn’t mine. And I’ve always prided myself on doing the right thing.
So, I walked into the Jackson Branch of the Ocean County Library, feeling like I was entering a confessional booth. I slid the book across the counter. The teenager behind the desk blinked at it like I had just handed him a stone tablet.
“What’s a Commodore 64?” he asked.
He flipped through the pages, then checked the back. “What’s this card with numbers?”
He searched for a barcode. Nothing. Eventually, he called over a manager. She took one look at the book and burst out laughing.
It’s not every day someone returns a 40-year-old overdue library book.
They checked the system. My account had probably been closed sometime in the early ‘90s. All fines were waived. My conscience, cleared.
Walking out of the library, I felt an odd mix of nostalgia and relief. That book was a part of my story, but it was never mine to keep. Maybe it’ll end up in the archives, or maybe on a display of “library oddities.” Maybe it’ll be discarded. But I hope it gets checked out again someday, even if just for a laugh.
After all, it taught me how to code in BASIC, which led to Pascal, then Perl, JavaScript, PHP, and beyond. It was more than a book. It was the start of everything.
And now it’s back home.
If you’re wondering, which you probably are not. I still have my original Commodore 128 and Intellivision and they both still work. My breadbox Commodore 64 died a miserable death back in 1988 that involved lots of smoke and even some fire.
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by Phil Stilton
Editor/CEO – Shore Media and Marketing, LLC / Shore News Network