When I went away to college at age seventeen, I took my mother’s college trunk with me. She had been given the trunk when she went to college in 1951. When she gave it to me in 1973, it had sat in the unfinished part of the basement in my parents’ house ever since I could remember. I used to keep her old formal dresses—my dress-up gowns—in the trunk. Probably, however, the trunk had resided in my grandparents’ home from her college graduation in 1955 until my parents built their house in 1962. That’s about the time my grandparents left Klamath Falls, Oregon, for Pacific Grove, California. I’m betting they sent my mother all her pre-marriage stuff then, just as my parents later sent mine to me, and as I will soon do to my children.
My mother’s trunk in my sophomore dorm room at Middlebury
Mother’s trunk was an old steamer trunk, blue metal on the outside, a light wood or board of some type inside that was covered with wallpaper or other patterned paper. It had heavy brass trim and a brass lock.
When I went to college, I packed it full of bedding, towels, a few books, winter clothes, and a typewriter. Once packed, it weighed more than I did. Then we shipped it to Middlebury, Vermont, via Railway Express. Railway Express doesn’t exist anymore, but it was a huge rival of United Parcel Service in its day. Railway Express was better for shipping large items, while UPS served the smaller parcel market. Or so my family thought.
When my dad and I arrived at Middlebury College in early September 1973, we retrieved my trunk from the campus security office, which was where we had been instructed to ship it. Then we lugged it up five flights of stairs to my top-story freshman dorm room. There was a small dumbwaiter in the dorm, but every freshman in the five-story dorm was trying to use it. We decided not to wait for our turn.
By the end of my freshman year, I had acquired too much stuff to store it all in my mother’s trunk. I filled it, then filled some boxes with things I wouldn’t need over the summer. The trunk and boxes stayed in the attic storage of my freshman dorm, which was around the corner from my fifth-floor room.
When I returned to Middlebury for my sophomore year, I had no way to transport the trunk from fifth-floor attic to my new dorm across campus (where I lived on the fourth floor, though it was only two and a half stories up from the building entrance). I made many trips carrying the boxes and armloads of bedding from the trunk, down all those stairs, across campus, and up the stairs to my new room. Then at some point a few days later, I prevailed on one of my few friends with a car to haul the mostly empty trunk to my new dorm.
By the end of my sophomore year, I had WAY more stuff than would fit in my mother’s trunk. Plus, I was planning to spend the summer at Eastern Washington State College (now Eastern Washington University) in Cheney, Washington, and the fall at The American University in Washington, D.C. My parents told me I should leave whatever I could at Middlebury. They didn’t want to ship my things west to Washington State, then east again.
As I recall, the campus security folks told me that they could store trunks that locked, but they didn’t want to be responsible for cardboard boxes. So I ordered a trunk from Sears. That is the trunk that still survives in our basement. I don’t recall how I got it from the Sears store to my dorm. I have a vague recollection of taking the only taxi in Middlebury from town to campus, but I could be wrong about that.
My new trunk was slightly larger than my mother’s trunk. It was also blue, made mostly of heavy cardboard, with silver trim and lock. I filled that trunk as well as my mother’s with college detritus I could abandon for seven months, then stored both trunks with Campus Security. I don’t know how I got the trunks to their facility. They might have taken pity on me and picked up the trunks in one of their trucks.
But many of the details of all these college moves are lost. I know I had my typewriter with me at Cheney and in D.C., but I don’t recall how I transported the typewriter.
I did my 1974 summer school term in Cheney with bedding scrounged from my parents’ house. Actually, I got a television from them also—the only college term where I had a television in my room.
My dad went with me in September 1974 to Washington, D.C. (he could always find a reason in his job to go to D.C.) to get me situated at The American University. I recall shipping boxes from Richland to D.C. and then shipping the boxes from D.C. to Middlebury that December. The typewriter stayed with me at all times. One box of books was lost, which taught me to always—ALWAYS—put a return address inside any box I’m shipping.
When I returned to Middlebury in January 1976, I was housed temporarily in one dorm. I only retrieved enough of my bedding and clothing to stay warm. The rest of the boxes and items in the trunks awaited my assignment to a room for the spring semester. At the end of January when I got my room assignment, I had a friend with a car (I knew more people with cars by then) to help me get the trunks to Le Château, my dorm for my last semester at Middlebury.
My mother’s trunk next to my bed in my last room at Middlebury. My Sears trunk next to the desk. I loved this room in Le Château with its pretty windows.
As I was hauling a trunk into my new room, the R.A. told me that wasn’t my room. She was assigning it to her boyfriend. I told her the Housing Office had given me the key. The R.A.’s rationale for overriding the Housing Office was that, as a senior, surely I would want to wait for the bigger room that would open up in a couple of days. But no, I had moved the trunks, and I told her I was staying. We all traipsed over to Student Housing, where I was confirmed as the rightful occupant of the room.
In June 1976, I graduated from Middlebury. At that point, both trunks along with many boxes were shipped back to my parents’ home in Richland, Washington. I don’t recall how I shipped them—Railway Express had gone bankrupt by then.
The trunks only stayed in Richland until August 1976, when they got shipped to Stanford, California, for me to begin law school. Once again, I have no memory of how they got to campus. My parents drove me to Stanford, so it’s possible one trunk went in the car with us. But both trunks would not have fit, not even in my dad’s Olds 98.
Both trunks sat side by side in my first-year room at Stanford Law School. My stereo system was housed on top of them.
The trunks stayed with me at Stanford, moving from my dorm room first year, to another dorm second year, to married student housing in December 1977, where they stayed until my husband and I graduated from law school in May 1979.
Then the trunks made their way from Stanford to Kansas City. Again, I don’t know how we handled the transportation. My husband had a car—a Pinto station wagon—and it could have hauled the trunks to UPS.
Since 1979, we moved those trunks from apartment to our first house to our current house in October 1984.
Several years after we moved into this house, my mother’s trunk suffered some water damage. It had been placed in a damp corner of the basement. After all its travels (and I have not recounted its travels with my mother, from Klamath Falls to San Rafael, California, to Eugene, Oregon, and back to Klamath Falls), it was time to say good-bye. One Tuesday morning, it went out to the curb on bulky trash day. It was approximately forty years old at the time, maybe forty-five.
The Sears trunk, age 44
But the newer Sears trunk remained in our basement. I described its most recent contents and probable demise in one of last week’s posts. Assuming I give it away this spring, I will have owned it for forty-four years—approximately the same age as its older sibling, my mother’s trunk. It has served me well, but I am ready to dispose of it.
How can you tell your history through items you own?
