I never really did understand the reasoning that went into
naming Amelia Earhart Luggage. I mean, what was the point? Seriously?
About seven years before her plane crashed in the Pacific or
possibly was stolen in mid-flight by aliens, she crashed another plane on this
day, September 25, 1930 at the Hampton Roads Naval Air Station.
Later that night at a dinner party she made light of the
accident saying, “It was just one of those little things.”—Like a bump in the
road, perhaps.
If Mitt Romney had been alive then and running for—I don’t
know—maybe pilot-in-chief, he might have been heard to exclaim, “Just a little
thing! Just a little thing! My God, her plane flipped over and she calls it
just a little thing. How out of touch can one person be?”
Anyway, when I realized that today was the anniversary of
that crash I went looking into my archives—a box labeled “Rejected Stuff.” This
was a letter written to the Virginian-Pilot on May 8, 1979, just a few months
after we had moved to Virginia Beach.
Editor, Virginian-Pilot:
This month’s giveaway at a local bank is a beautiful
matching set of Amelia Earhart luggage—“Something to hold your dreams.” It’s
good to know someone has a sense of humor although the last people I would have
suspected would be the banks.
The possibilities for Amelia Earhart luggage are endless:
Say your mother-in-law came over for dinner one night and
never left; and that was six months ago! Give her a beautiful matching set of
Amelia Earhart luggage for Mother’s Day and kiss her goodbye forever.
Say you borrowed $500 from a friend and now he’s beginning
to threaten you. Don’t fret. Borrow another thousand and send him on an
all-expense paid trip to Pago Pago with his brand new matching set of Amelia
Earhart luggage. Watch your money problems fly out the window.
Say the 9 to 5 rat race has you beat and you want to get
away from it all. Buy yourself a beautiful set of Amelia Earhart luggage and
say goodbye to your workday blues.
And say, it you feel your mother-in-law or friend might get bored on their upcoming excursions, why not pack a handsome surprise in their brand new Amelia Earhart Luggage? How about a copy of Wiley Post's Come Fly With Me?
And say, it you feel your mother-in-law or friend might get bored on their upcoming excursions, why not pack a handsome surprise in their brand new Amelia Earhart Luggage? How about a copy of Wiley Post's Come Fly With Me?
This luggage thing works for presidents too! I thought I would save my set for my mother inlaw but I'm sending them to Obama! The funny thing about all this is Obama runs the country like Amelia Earhart flew her planes.
ReplyDeleteHmm,how about you send your jilted friend on a long distance ride with your mother-in-law and see if perhaps the aliens are biting that sunny afternoon. No harm in trying right? Nice story. Was this an actual luggage line or a special edition type thing to commemorate an anniversary? Seems like a bit of an oxymoron: Amelia Earnhart luggage. Kind of like the ever-available cruise to nowhere.
ReplyDeleteIt was and is an actual line, which seems strange given the connotation associated with Amelia's last flight. On the up side, though, she was a very accomplished flyer and she and others were taking risks that would one day revolutionize travel and even put a man a the moon. Everything has to start somewhere.
DeleteOn this wonder woman's flight across the Atlantic... Since most of the flight was on "instruments" and Earhart had no training for this type of flying, she did not pilot the aircraft. When interviewed after landing, she said, "Stultz did all the flying—had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes." She added, "...maybe someday I'll try it alone."
DeleteA sack of potatoes...where have I heard that before. The only trail she blazed was the trail of what not to do!