On the Move

The 1970’s was the decade in which airline travel became normal for us. Aisf Siddiqi confirms this here, describing how advances in jet engine construction led to new social habits for the middle class: “students were now traveling to Europe for summers, and families were now vacationing in far-off places for a single weekend. By the 1970s, the convenience of jet travel made vast international cultural exchanges a norm.”

The United States is a very large place. Line, Marty and Paul, take up residence far from their parents in California and Alaska. Mother and Dad still have young children at home and do all of their vacationing at their cabin on a northern Minnesota lake. They hardly travel at all. But affordable airline travel allows Line, Marty and Paul to travel to Minnesota to visit every once in a while.

Travel set off all kinds of innovation in luggage and gear to make it possible. Researching questions such as “when did roller bags come into use?” or “when were baby backpacks first used?” reminded me that many of the things we now take for granted were new, or didn’t exist at the time I am writing about.

Ann Moore with her daughter

You could find the first Snugli in the 1970’s. It was patented by Ann Moore in 1969. She had noticed how peaceful babies carried on their mother’s backs were, in Togo where she was a Peace Corps volunteer. With her mother’s help, she crafted a backpack so she could “wear” her daughter and have her hands free. There was no advertisement. People just kept asking Ann, “where can I get one of those?” Ann sent the orders back to her mother in Ohio, who sewed them with the help of her friends. It was then featured in the Whole Earth Catalog, and became a cottage industry for the little town in Ohio where Ann grew up.

About the same time, Owen Maclaren, an aeronautical engineer, heard his daughter complaining about the difficulties of traveling with a baby carriage. Maclaren came up with the idea of a lightweight, safe stroller that could be folded up like an umbrella, getting a US patent for it in 1968. With a strong, aluminum frame the stroller weighed six pounds and took up very little space. Maclaren products, manufactured near Rugby, England, and exported everywhere, led the innovation in strollers that continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

You did not see many suitcases on wheels in the 1970s, much less the colorful little roller bags kids all have now. Bernard Sadow had trouble selling the idea when he first had it in 1970. Mr. Sadow was frequently told that men would not accept suitcases with wheels. “It was a very macho thing,” he said. He did begin to sell them, but big suitcases tipped and wobbled, pulled on a strap on their little wheels. In 1987 Robert Plath, a Northwest Airlines pilot, put two wheels and a long handle on his bag, calling it the Rollaboard. He sold it to his fellow crew members. When travelers in airports saw flight attendants striding briskly through airports with their Rollaboards in tow, everyone wanted one.

I’ve taken airline travel pretty much for granted ever since I took an Icelandic flight from New York to London in 1966. The most hair-raising flight for me was on an ancient airplane upholstered with ruffled green cushions from Chengdu to Chongqing, China, in October, 1990. I didn’t find out what the vintage of the propeller-driven airplane was. It clanked and bumped down the runway, but it did have cabin pressure and cheerful uniformed stewardesses. My heart was in my mouth, as they say, but I reasoned with myself that all of the other perhaps 100 passengers expected to arrive safely, and indeed we did!

I’ve never been in an airline emergency, or even lost a suitcase in all these years. I suspect my experience of the airlines is common, though I travel a lot less these days. One’s suitcase, as it comes bumping out of the baggage handlers and around the moving belt, will always be a welcome sight! And, like the character in Love Actually, I find the meetings of friends and relations in airports forever thrilling.