Overdue in the sense that they can no longer be found in a library, except possibly in some vast collection in New York or on some dusty shelf in Chase or Salmon Arm.
We have thought for a very long time that libraries should be the places to find out-of-print books, instead of this week's best-sellers, no matter how many people are crying for the latest Nora Roberts or James Patterson.
This concern was brought to mind by a note from a fellow digressionist (if that wasn't a word, it is now) lamenting the disappearance of books by H. Allen Smith and Richard Bissell, both authors once enormously popular, Smith for "Rhubarb" and "Low Man on a Totem Pole" and Bissell for "7 1/2 Cents," which became the musical "Pajama Game." (You say paa-jama, I say pah-jahma. I also spell it with a y.)
But that's beside the point, if, in fact, there is one. Many will remember the hit songs from "Pajama Game"--Hey, There," "Steam Heat," "Hernando's Hideaway"--but our favorite remains "Seven-and-a-half cents doesn't buy a hell of a lot."
Bissell wrote "7 1/2 Cents" after working in his family's pyjama factory, which is not the career choice you would think of for a Harvard graduate, but, happily, it led to his first novel and a number of other comedies.
We'll forgive him "Still Circling Moose Jaw."
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