This has to be the strangest book story I’ve ever come across.

The town councilmen over in Delavan – a town not far from where I live – found themselves in a real stew. An old building just down from the business district was in a shamefully shabby condition. Heck, it was a fire hazard.

The town didn’t own the building, and Ed Chesko, the man who did, was up in years and couldn’t afford to take care of the place any longer. Chesko kinda wanted to give the building to the town and let the town either save the building or tear it down.

Tear it down would be the cheap way to go, but the Israel Stowell House was historic. It had been built 170 years ago as a hotel and social center for Delevan’s Temperance movement. It’s the last surviving Temperance building in Wisconsin.

Now you’re wondering what books-by-the-truckload has to do with this old wreck of a place. Chesko, when he was an active businessman, owned the Old Delavan Book Company, a bookstore some years back. The Stowell House was his warehouse. He had 50,000 books in the thing, ranging from rare books that are collectible to dime-store paperbacks that aren’t.

Chesko found an out. He gave the Stowell House and all its contents to the Delavan Historical Society. The society’s board of directors are now raising money to restore the place so it can be the society’s headquarters and a repository for its archive.

But those books that filled up the Stowell House, racks from floor to ceiling and up the staircase? An electrical short or a match thrown in would send all that bound paper up in flames, so the town ordered the building cleaned out by last week or it would send in a wrecking crew with endloaders and dump trucks to knock the building down and haul it and the books to the landfill.

The historical society sent out the word: Books for sale, cheap.

A Wisconsin book dealer responded as did a dealer in Tennessee. Each hauled away a truckload of books.

If no other dealer takes the books that remain, the historical society may put them out front in a yard sale – all income to go into the fund to restore the building.

So it may well be that books have saved a historic building in this Wisconsin town.

Tomorrow: The future of the book – Part 1