If you stashed a supply of beer and chewing gum in the mystery section of the Walla Walla Public Library in Washington, we have some bad news for you.
Workers in the library discovered—and, tragically, disposed of—five cans of Hamm’s beer and a pack of Godzilla Heads chewing gum that was hidden behind a panel, the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin reports.
The breakfast of champions had been hidden there for more than three decades, the City of Walla Walla said in a Facebook post. “Godzilla Heads gum dates to the late 1980s, and the rule that requires warnings to be printed on alcohol containers was enacted in November 1988,” the post explained.
“I’ve seen a lot of stuff get stashed,” the library’s director, Erin Wells, told the Union-Bulletin. “But nothing quite like that.”
Wells told CNN that the beer and gum enthusiast might have decided to stash the booty while under the influence of a can of Minnesota’s finest.
“There were probably six beers that they bought, and there [were] only five that we found, so they might not have been thinking straight when they did it,” Wells speculated.
Washingtonians hoping to get their hands on the vintage beer and gum will be disappointed, though.
“What’s the next chapter for the artifacts?” killjoys from the city wrote on Facebook. “After chewing on the question for a while, library staff decided to transfer them to another City facility. The abandoned relics now reside in the Sudbury Landfill. It’s probably not the outcome the trove owner expected; unfortunately, not every story has a happy ending.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
