Seeing those hard-side green suitcases took me smack back into the past.
I had a set of them during my college years. I’d fill each of the three matching pieces with the few clothes I could afford and head off to Paine College in Augusta, GA. Then, I’d use the large one for my weekend trips on a Trailways bus to my home in Macon, GA. The bus would stop in seemingly every small town along the way. Sparta, GA, is one I recall the most. The town had no bus station, just a bus stop.
The most famous suitcases I remember were Samsonite and American Tourister, but I couldn’t afford either. So we bought an off-brand, which I believe was Forecast.
At an auction recently, two pieces of green Forecast luggage with chrome locks were stacked atop each other on an outside table. The set was missing its train case for holding cosmetics and toiletries. Either the owner or a family member clearing an estate had decided that it was time for it to go.
It was the first time I’d seen these types of suitcases at auction. I’ve certainly seen their predecessors of travel: those big heavy trunks belonging to people of means – and toted by their servants – during steamship travel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some trunks wore exterior labels noting the places their owners had traveled to or the ships they had traveled on or the hotels where they had stayed. Then came trains – which opened up travel to ordinary people – and lighter suitcases.
Steamer trunks, whose interior look like a small version of someone’s closet, come up at auction pretty often. Once, I came across a suitcase filled with toddler’s clothing and wondered about the story behind it. Another time, a doll’s steamer trunk turned up.
The Forecast luggage at auction was the color green, which with blue seemed to be the most predominate colors when I was in college. The suitcases had a hard textured surface and were as heavy as a steamer trunk when filled with clothes, shoes, toiletries and anything else we could fit inside them.
Remember the 1970s commercial with a gorilla beating up a hard-side suitcase to demonstrate the luggage’s durability? It was an American Tourister ad, but I remembered it as Samsonite probably because that company was “the” name in luggage.
One of the nicest things about those suitcases was that they fit snugly inside each other for storage. They would get scuffed after years of manhandling by bus drivers or my bumping them into things as I tried to maneuver them.
My suitcases had no wheels, but it seems that there may have been a few of those around. A man named Bernard D. Sadow came up with the idea in 1970 while walking through an airport with two heavy suitcases. He happened to notice an airport worker rolling heavy machinery on a platform. He went home and put castors on a big suitcase – and created rolling luggage with a strap and four wheels. Unfortunately, his rolling luggage didn’t take off very quickly. Wheeled luggage became popular after an airline pilot named Robert Plath created a two-wheel version with a handle in 1987.
The luggage I had was very utilitarian and was purchased for use not for style. Samsonite made some luggage that was actually quite lovely and could be collectible as decoration. Today, some companies have created retro vintage luggage with wheels to capture the nostalgia of the days when we lugged heavy suitcases.
