Suitcases

My grandmother used to have a suitcase that was large and rectangular shaped; it had a bakelite handle and stripes on the sides in shades of brown and yellow. She packed it for the two of us when we took the bus from Birmingham to Savannah in about 1954. There was something very special about her suitcase; to me it smelled of mysterious places faraway. In reality, neither she nor the suitcase ever traveled more than about 300 miles away from home. My grandfather, who had traveled widely on the Mississippi as a young man referred to her suitcase as her valise.

My father’s suitcase was a big reddish brown Samsonite bag. He took it on all of his trips to Washington, DC. He used to fly the old Capitol Airlines and stay at the Willard. His life seemed so exciting to me and that suitcase symbolized the lure of business travel (little did I know of the drudgery).

By the time I was in elementary school, I started going to conferences with my parents and we traveled all over the US. I got to borrow my grandmother’s suitcase and it and I went to exotic places like Columbus, Denver, St. Louis and Boston. My dad always drove; and he always said as we packed the car that all the suitcases would never fit in the trunk. But they always did!

When I got to college I got my first REAL set of luggage. It was a three piece set of American Tourister – beige with green lining. It was heavy and better suited to a porter’s cart than my weak arms. The first weekend home from college, I felt compelled to bring my BIG suitcase and my little square matching “train case.” How silly that all seems now.

That luggage served me well for many years, but in the 1980s I discovered soft-sided luggage with wheels. I picked up a few pieces here and there and my old American Tourister sat in the closet. It was a joy to pull a nylon bag along on four little wheels, although the thing often flipped over.

My family has a habit of naming my luggage and they referred to very unusual bag I bought in about 1990 as the “little black pig.” It was a magic bag with lots of little wheels on the bottom and it never tipped over. I still have it, but it hasn’t gone anywhere in years.

In just a couple of years, the “rolly bag” hit the scene. I saw a friend from New York with one and I just had to have one. Since then I have collected a fleet of the things in different sizes. I recall with terror my memory of falling backwards down an escalator at Gatwick Airport while trying to pull my huge “rolly bag” up the escalator.

After a recent trip with a conventional small, airline approved “rolly bag” I realized that I could no longer wield a heavily-loaded bag and get it in the overhead compartment. Independent soul that I am, I knew that even with my gray hair, I couldn’t count on some man coming along to heft it in and out of the bin for me.

I went online and ordered a new bag. It looks like it is made out of black patent leather and is sort of oval shaped. It has wheels like inline skates and is very ergonomic. It only weighs 5.5 pounds and holds a decent amount of clothes. I love it! My family, however, promptly named it Darth Vader’s vacuum cleaner. These days, traveling light is more important than being well-dressed. Who cares what those people in other places think of me!