Leaving a Luggage Legacy
From 1962 honeymoon to 2026 toolbox
For our 38th wedding anniversary this year, my husband and I did a little fun thing in the northwest Indiana countryside, where we like to hang out:
We went for an old-fashioned train ride!
Originally I’d booked a steam engine ride at the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum. Given that we’d never ridden in steam engine train before, I thought that would be mega cool. Alas, the steam engine had mechanical difficulties that day, and we had to settle for this cute 1952 General Electric 95-ton switcher diesel-electric locomotive pulling us around. Not what we’d wanted, but still fun.
This heavy industrial engine used to be a common sight in the railyards around the steel mills in northwest Indiana. It was designed for maneuvering heavy railway cars over short distances, i.e. “switching around,” hence its name.
Now it’s used to pull tourist trains when the steam engine isn’t working.
After we returned from our ride, we poked around the old North Judson railway station turned museum.
And what did I spot sitting under a table in the former train station waiting area?
A suitcase that looked exactly like the one my mother used to have!
This made sense as we were basically visiting the 1950s in this train museum, and Mom got her set of three white suitcases as a wedding present in 1962—in time for her first overseas trip: My parents’ honeymoon, crossing the Atlantic by boat to visit the in-laws Mom hadn’t met yet in Germany.
I immediately snapped a picture of this suitcase and sent it to my siblings, asking my brother whether he still had Mom’s old suitcase set.
Sure enough, he sent back the above picture of Mom’s old suitcase, taken in a hotel room on a recent trip of his. He still likes to use her stylish luggage on short trips. It just has character, unlike our present-day functional suitcases.
Not only that!
Mom’s erstwhile cosmetics case serves as my brother’s tool box!
I was blown away when, three years ago, as we siblings moved Mom into a group home for seniors with dementia in Germany, my brother arrived, carrying Mom’s chic, white, and square vanity case full of tools.
It’s the perfect size, he explained, and sturdy as hell! Never mind the mirror on the inside of its lid.
He also sent me this picture of our newlywed parents, arriving in Wiesbaden, Germany, on their honeymoon in 1962, when Mom met Dad’s parents for the first time.
Everyone is decked out—I don’t recall ever seeing my grandmother wear a hat like that! Mom, on the other hand, always had style. I’m sure she’s wearing high heels in this photo, sadly not visible, either green or white to match her clothes, because high heels were the only shoes she owned in those days.
And there are Mom and Dad’s suitcases: Mom’s set of white (surely the cosmetics case is stacked behind the other suitcases?) and Dad’s iconic brown suitcase full of travel stickers.
Those suitcases defined the travels of my early childhood.
In December 1965, Mom’s dad took the above picture when my parents arrived at Detroit Airport with Dad’s mom, two-year-old me, and my toddler brother, whom Dad is carrying. We were going to spend Christmas with Mom’s family in the Detroit area before traveling on to Florida, where Dad had an expat assignment for Siemens beginning in January. Both grandmothers are sporting hats in this airport scene, and Mom’s white suitcase and Dad’s brown one are clearly stacked on the luggage cart to the left.
Stumbling upon “Mom’s” suitcase at the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum made me think of all our luggage.
I mean actual luggage, not baggage! ;-)
It amazes me that my siblings and I still have the luggage our parents traveled with in the 1960s—how sturdy and high quality are those suitcases that they’ve been holding up so well?
We also still have our parents’ steamer trunks that they used to move from the US to Germany in 1964. There were three steamer trunks, and now my brother, my sister, and I each have one. Mine still serves as a side table in my living room! (Story on that coming up!)
I’ve traveled a lot with my own family, but every ten years or so, our lightweight 4-wheel suitcase wonders stop functioning and need to be replaced. The zippers break, the sides tear open, the wheels jam.
I had a chic purple Samsonite set once, one you could easily recognize as yours on an airline luggage carousel. On our 2022 flight to Poland, the zipper of the outside pouch was destroyed. I had to buy a new Samsonite at a mall in Warsaw, just to be able to continue on the trip, but shlepped the broken purple suitcase along to later have it “fixed” at the one repair shop in Chicago that still does this kind of work. Alas, it broke again, and I gave up on preserving my own set of luggage.
My husband and I won’t leave a luggage legacy, even though we’ve traveled a lot, farther and wider than my parents.
But there probably will be the steamer trunk, and in my brother’s case, Mom’s white suitcases and Dad’s brown one. They have survived and they shall survive.
Oh, this reminds me: I do have one of my German grandmother’s cute old suitcases sitting on a top shelf in my closet. Time, perhaps, to air it out and use it as a design element somewhere?
Annette, I love this post! I have my mom’s white luggage, exactly the same as your mom’s set! I also have the same thing in a blue set, I think it was her sister’s. I use them today for historical reference material storage currently. They also make the perfect backdrop in displays (I used one at my local library). When I was teaching they were used as a prop to catch kid’s attention. 😊🧳
Such a wonderful post and refreshingly different! Which quietly raises an interesting genealogical point: sometimes the most durable “records” of family history aren’t written documents at all, but the things that physically survive.