Before I went to England for an extended period of time, I treated myself to a nice set of luggage. Knowing that I was going to be responsible for hauling my luggage around, I was excited to find some large suitcases with wheels. The fact that they were beautiful was just icing on the cake. This was back before most luggage had wheels, so it was indeed a great find. It seems to me that I spent around $200 on them. That’s more than $900 in today’s money.

This style luggage was seen on WKRP in Cincinnati (the only episode I ever watched) and in Rocky IV where a robot tells Rocky’s coach to “be careful with the plaid ones, they belong to the boss”.

The zippers broke on at least one. We had the zippers repaired so could still use them, and did for a while but then better roller suitcases came along so I quit using these suitcases as suitcases.

Eventually we gave them to Clare when she went off to college — they were perfect for storing under her bed. She didn’t take them with her when she left for Olympia so they sat in the knee wall, full of her stuff, for nearly ten years.

We’ve emptied one and made the sad decision to let the trashmen haul it away tomorrow when they pick up our garbage. I’m pretty sad, but since it zips up on both sides and both zippers are broken (and expensive to repair) it would be silly to keep it. We still have the other, larger one.