Treasure Chest

Some years ago, ten or so perhaps?, a shipment arrived, a gift from Joe. He had told me it was coming, wouldn't say what it was, but said I would recognize it immediately, which I did: a car trunk. To my knowledge, nobody else owns one.

Reportedly manufactured to go on a Model T Ford, it isn’t feasible for me to identify it specifically to car make and model or year, but it is a car trunk.

When I was a boy, not much was more exciting on long nighttime family drives home from visiting grandparents, aunts and uncles in Pensacola, than staying awake and watching the cars that passed us on the highway. Especially so was coming up behind a car older than ours, that had a trunk rack folded up against the back,

or a car with a trunk actually sitting on the trunk rack:

In the early days, cars did not have built in trunks, or boots. The rear was vertical, straight up and down or slightly slanted for style. If the spare tire was not “side mount” it was on the rear of the car, perhaps with the bumper designed around it. On a trip, your luggage was stored inside the car.

This car has a trunk rack and trunk, because the car has no built in trunk, that's a rumble seat above the trunk:

Or the car might have a trunk, a real trunk like mine. You could bring the trunk inside the house and pack it, then lug it (luggage, get it?) outside to the car and lift it onto the trunk rack, and strap it down.

My trunk has built in slots for the strapping down. Along in the nineteen-thirties, "built-in-trunks" became an available option.

For years, my car trunk has been upstairs in my office, filled with automobile brochures dating back into the nineteen-teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies. Yesterday’s retirement project was unloading all my old car books, perhaps hundreds of them

and bringing the trunk downstairs to install in a place of high honor, in Joe’s Room. The car books

will go back inside, perhaps this morning. Meantime, the trunk is open, airing out.

Target acquisition, perhaps: a trunk rack to go under it.