Trunks 50 Cents Extra

Someone the other day remarked that they were rolling a steamer trunk through the mall as part of their effort to outfit their offspring for college. Half of this came as no surprise. Outfitting kids for college in August is not unheard of in 2010. Rolling a steamer trunk in 2010 is though something I didn't expect anyone to announce.

It's actually a time warp setting, if you think about it. Mall. Steamer trunk. Like something on an aptitude test (for college, for instance) that would be an example of what doesn't "match." Definitely different eras.

Upon hearing this I thought that if that person took the wrong left at the water fountain they might reach the edge of the terrazzo floor and bump right into a Railway Express office. If this were to happen, they would have certainly entered the Twilight Zone.

Steamer trunks. Railway Express. Green trucks that came to the house to haul the clothes off to camp. Or college. Labels. Stiff card stock labels with brown reinforcements, attached with wire to front and side trunk handles that announced destination and origin.

Steamer trunks. What was upstairs in the attic that brought my parents' belongings from their first place together in Philadelphia to the house they bought in Flushing. Delivered by a Railway Express truck, not a stagecoach. Dusty, faded labels still attached.

Taxis in New York City had a sign on the meter that announced that trunks were 50 cents extra. Of course the sign used the cents symbol, and I can't find that using this application.

Cabs and trunks came together when people actually did get off, or head to, steamers (or later diesel ships), with trunks, and were headed somewhere away from the pier. Now they hit golf balls on the pier.

None of this would rate any effort to recount if it wasn't for today, on getting off the train and going through the Amtrak level of Penn Station, that there wasn't someone else rolling a steamer trunk through the place.

This fellow was definitely not a parent outfitting their child for college. They were themselves only somewhat past college age, long shoulder length hair, six foot three, wearing a long sleeve sweatshirt on what at 7:30 A.M. was already an 80 degree day. And there was an electric guitar slung over their shoulder, no case, and what looked like noise cancelling headphones somewhere under their hair.

They slid the steamer trunk toward the outside men's room wall and went in. I fully expected that if they lingered for whatever reason the next thing I was going to see was bomb sniffing dogs poking their noses at the unattended luggage. This didn't happen, because the fellow was young enough not to have a swollen prostate, and/or also didn't care about washing and drying his hands. He was out before the dogs got there, and rolled away.

So, within two days I've heard of and seen two very different people pushing steamer trunks through public places. Men hardly wear suits anymore.

I wonder if steamer trunks are somehow making a comeback.

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