The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1907-09-20
BAGGAGE
SMASHING DAYS

'the story of what the baggage smash
er did 10 the trunk was a hardy per-
ennial, ever blooming and unfailing-
ly appealing, but where is that story
now?
I'm those days when the baggage
master wanted TO get a trunk down
from the top of high pile of trunks
he never lifted IL down, but just pull
ed it far enough forward to let gravi-
ty get 1t and then. with just the right
slew on it that it would land on its
corner, let ii fall.
And then baggage masters used
simply to push trunks out of car doors
and let them fall any way they would,
and they'd tear the straps of trunks
lifting on them, and yank OF their
handles, all these variations of the
baggage story being supposed to be
funny and often repeated.
People seemed never to tire Of 1t
in what was perhaps its most favored
form, which told how the brawny bag
gage HEAVIER lifted the trunk by one
handle and swung it twice around
his head and then launched ii on its
flight from the station platform TO
the baggage car to land violently
there and split wide open and scatter
its contents everywhere. In those
days, indeed, the baggage master was
the baggage smasher, and, always pro-
vided that 1t was not ones own trunk
that was thus demolished everybody
enjoyed reading the stories told about
this brawny mans feats of strength
and destruction, which formed indeed
a conspicuous if not the leading fea-
ture of the comic literature of the
day. But where are those stories
now?
They were eked out for a time by
baggage stories of another sort, those
dealing not with what the baggage
smasher did to the trunk, but with
what the trunk did 10 the baggage
smasher. There, for instance, was
the story widely reprinted at the time,
of the circus man who, having his
of it, finally filled a frail trunk with
boa constructors and got that checked,
and when the baggage smasher had
smashed the trunk the boa construct
ors thus released from it wrapped
themselves around and crushed him.
And there was the story of the
disgruntled mining man who finally
filled and checked a trunk full of dy-
namite-the baggage master who han
died that trunk never handled trunks
any more. And the story of the hum
orous traveller who had his trunk fit
ted with corner pieces of peculiar
ly elastic rubber, so that when the
baggage master dropped this trunk
out of the car door to fall on a corner
as he was sure TO do, the trunk would
fly up and hit him under the chin.
But evidently the trunk smashing
story in whatever form was petering
out when it came to this, and soon
thereafter it passed out Of fashion and
disappeared entirely TO be heard no
more from that TO the present time
perhaps the people had tired Of it,,
as they do of ali things; perhaps
there was less reason for writing it,
Trunks came 70 BE- better made, for
one thing, less easy to smash. And
we are generally less boistercus now
than we were then; things that we
stood for and laughed over then we
would not stand for now.
1--WE do many things better now,
and one of our many improvements
is found in our manner of handling
trunks. The railroads now discourage
trunk smashing and seek TO deliver
baggage in the shape in which it is
received Not but that things do hap
pen even now to trunks, but they
don't happen as they used to-
I'm fact what with the requirements
of the railroad company and his own
sense of the later and higher art of
baggage handling it is not considered
good form now for a baggage man to
smash a trunk. He still does pull
trunks down from the tops of tall piles
and drags trunks from car doors and
from the tails of wagons, but no long
er, as rule, to let them fall on their
corners.
Now when he pulls down or drops
trunk he so manipulates ii in falling
as to make it drop not on a corner
but squarely on its end. This stirs the
contents of the trunk up pretty WELL
and it may strain the trunk more or
less. but dropping it squarely on the
end distributes the strain; it doesn't
smash the trunk as trunks were
smashed in the old days when they
were dropped on their corners. In the
present day development of the art of
trunk handling TO smash any but a
very weak and fragile trunk would be
considered bungling.
so times have changed, and the
old story no longer goes. The old
times were brought back to me yester-
day by seeing trunk fall off a bag
gage wagon into the street, a sight,
confess, that was joyous to see.
But / suppose it is better as it is"