American Picker

Hey, look what I found in the trash!


Well, sort of. It was sitting on the sidewalk across the street with the trash, but I choose to believe the fact that it wasn't in a trash bag was a sign that whoever put it out there wanted someone to adopt it and love it.



I thought it was a hat box and was going to use it to store some of Baby Razor's increasingly out of control toy collection, but no: it's a vintage American Tourister hard-shell suitcase, exactly like this one on sale at Etsy. It's a little dirty, and the inside smells like grandma, but I think I can clean it up and use it for something cool. Heck, I can even use it as god intended: as the world's most badass carry-on.


I almost didn't grab it. Partly because, while I am an experienced curb shopper, it feels weird to do it in suburbia where everyone can look out their window and see you taking someone else's trash. And partly because I now have a nagging voice in the back of my head going beeeeeeedbuuuuuuuugs. Stupid bedbugs.

But my armchair is next to the front window, and the suitcase was right in my line of vision this morning, calling to me. You know they crush garbage, right? it said. I'm just saying. That'll be on you. Yeah, for some reason vintage luggage sounds a lot like my mother.

Why was it out there? Well, there have been a lot of people stopping by the house across the street this week, poking around and cleaning, so I'm choosing to believe that the elderly woman who lived there went to an assisted living facility. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.


So, does anyone have tips on getting old-lady smell out of fabric? Or cleaning hard luggage (I'm guessing just scrub the crap out of it with soap & water. It looks built to withstand a nuclear bomb, after all.) And can anyone tell me what this mark, to the right of the American Tourister logo, is:

Monogram? Business name? Other?

Where Have You Gone, Man in the Yellow Hat?

Curious George & Friends opened in 1995 as Curious George Goes to Wordsworth. The name changed when Wordsworth went out of business in 2004. I started shopping there in 1996, when I was 18 and my niece was two. Now my niece is 17, my daughter is two, and Curious George is closing.


They were closed yesterday when I went to pay my respects (and do some discount shopping).


All the bare shelves used to be so packed with books that you'd have to wiggle them back in after you were done looking at them. That book you loved when you were a kid, whose name you forgot even though you could still describe the cover? They had it.


I never minded paying full price for books & toys there (instead of less at the big box stores) because I knew everything in Curious George was chosen with love and care. I will admit that I felt a little bad about being the aunt who gave two gifts instead of six, though.

But even at full price, I imagine they'd have to sell more books than anyone buys to continue to afford the $15,000 a month rent.

I'm heartbroken, and I felt a little silly about it because as my mom loves saying, it's not like somebody died. But as I was taking pictures through the windows yesterday, three separate people came up to the door, read the sign, and said, "Oh, no." At least I'm not alone.

[Totally Selfish Side Note: Does anyone know what happens to the store's decorations? Because I would shank my neighbors for a chance at George in the rocket ship.]