#Library finds beer and gum stash from ’80s hidden in shelves

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, the Walla Walla Public Library has been closed to the public since March and has since taken the time to do some renovations, library director Erin Wells told CNN.
City of Walla Walla

Washington state’s Walla Walla Public Library has been closed to the public since March due to the coronavirus pandemic, giving staff a unique opportunity to renovate the shelving. While moving the mystery section’s books this month, a facilities crew member made an appropriately peculiar discovery behind a 7-foot corner panel: an open pack of chewing gum and five full cans of Hamm’s beer dating to the 1980s.

“Along with the usual dust and dead bugs, he found five unopened cans of ‘the beer refreshing’ and some monstrously stale gum still in its vibrant packaging, along with a moldering paper bag,” the City of Walla Walla wrote in a Facebook post about the hilarious finding. “Someone had apparently taken a cue from ‘Treasure Island’ and stashed their booty behind the shelving, but then wasn’t able to retrieve it.”

The staff was able to date the contraband time capsule based on the gum label — Godzilla Heads, which dates to the late ’80s — and the beers’ lack of printed warning labels that have been required for alcohol containers since November 1988. “So we think the goods were there for upward of 30 years. Talk about a long shelf life!” the city wrote.

‘Along with the usual dust and dead bugs, he found five unopened cans.’

The library’s employees further theorized that the caché was unintentionally abandoned, the original owner perhaps too tipsy to recall where they’d stowed away their snacks.

“It looked like somebody had just stashed it there and maybe thought they could get it later . . . but there was no way to get it out,” library director Erin Wells told CNN. “There were probably six beers that they bought and there was only five that we found, so they might not have been thinking straight when they did it.”

Unearthing the trove of ’80s ale and chew was hardly a landfall for the library, which currently has a frozen operating budget and is seeking public donations, but it did bring “a bit of levity during a difficult time,” said Wells.

Despite sparking joy, the artifacts have now been transferred to another city facility — a local landfill.