My Rolling Carry On Luggage Excursions

If you’re anything like me, you love to travel? What kind of traveling do you do or dream of doing? Is your idea of travel satisfied by throwing a tent, a sleeping bag, a cooler and a camp stove into the car and heading for the nearest hill, valley, stream or lake? In that case rolling carry on luggage certainly is not a requirement. If, on the other hand, you feel drawn to foreign shores, then rolling carry on luggage is a wonderfully welcome luxury. I now own nothing but rolling luggage, carry-on or otherwise, but it took years of interesting adventures with all sorts of more or less useful bags, before I got there.

My very first personal luggage consisted of two hand-me-down vintage trunks, freshly refinished by my mother, because my first major trip as a young adult was also my immigration to a new continent. These two antique steamer trunks contained the bare necessities of life: toiletries, towels, sheets, cutlery, dinnerware, tablecloths, and clothing for all seasons - and a ‘Siemens’ tabletop radio. Seeing as my trunks had to be carried on to the boat, they certainly qualified as carry on luggage, but fortunately they did not roll. My boat, the MS Seven Seas, did quite enough of that on her own.

Coming to think of it, my very first piece of personal luggage was a leather school bag, worn like a ‘rucksack’. My fondest memory – tongue in cheek - is of shouldering it, filled with grapes, for a trip home from Oma’s house. This happened just after WWII, when food of any type was scarce and trains were packed to the point of people sitting on the roof and hanging from the sides. Inside was standing room – squeezing room – only, and the grapes slowly turned to grape juice. There was nothing I could do to prevent the juice from trickling down my backside!

Rolling carry on luggage! What a wonderful luxury! But I did without that luxury for a long, long time. Stay tuned, and I’ll tell you more in the days and weeks to come.