"Why Didn't The Trunk Lid Shut?"

Many years ago I was preparing to travel with a group of men from the company where I worked. My boss offered to drive all of us to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in his full-size Buick and we gladly accepted. Since he was the president of the company, it also saved him and the company money. We all brought our luggage to work with us on the day that we were to leave.

At the prescribed time we loaded our luggage in the large trunk of his car. My luggage consisted of a carry-on suitcase and a garment bag which held my suit and a couple of white shirts. I remember that I waited until everyone else had loaded their stuff so that I could carefully lay my garment bag on the top of the heavy suitcases. My engineering brain had told me that this would help to keep my suit and white shirts from getting wrinkled.

After I had put my garment bag into the trunk my boss arranged a few more items in the trunk while we climbed into his car. I remember that I was sitting in the back seat of the car with two other engineers from our company. After a few minutes we realized that our boss was still outside trying to get the trunk lid to shut. He kept slamming and slamming the lid with all his might. It just wouldn't close.

Being typical engineers we saw this as an opportunity to apply our vast knowledge of mechanical things and help to find out why the trunk lid wouldn't shut. We all piled out of the car and went around the trunk where the company president was preparing to slam the trunk lid one more time. He grabbed the trunk firmly with both hands, took a deep breath and with every ounce of force he could muster, he threw down the trunk lid to the closed position.

I remember that the lid was about 6 inches from hitting the locking latch when I noticed that part of my garment bag was covering the latch mechanism. It as too late. The lid came down with a solid thud and finally it locked.

"You hit my bag!" I shouted. "That's why it wouldn't shut!"

My boss had not even noticed that my bag had moved around in the trunk as he was arranging a few last items and that it finally had moved so that the edge of it was covering the latching mechanism.

You need to understand that the trunk latch mechanism of a full-size Buick at that time consisted of a steel post about 3/4 of an inch in diameter and about 3 inches long. The post mated with a round steel plate with a hole in it. When you shut the trunk the post went into the hole and a latch closed onto the post and held it tight. To make sure that the post would go into the hole, the post had been formed with a rather sharp point at the end and was coated with a light layer of black grease.

It was getting late so my boss did not want to waste time opening the trunk and checking for damage. Besides he was afraid that he might not be able to get the trunk shut if he opened it again.

When we got to LAX we opened the trunk and all of us grabbed our luggage. I was first since my garment bag was on top of everything else. I immediately noticed a beautifully punched 3/4 inch hole through the edge of my bag. When I opened it up to survey the damage, I couldn't believe what I found!

There was my nice blue wool suit with a greasy 3/4 inch diameter hole punched right through the left sleeve. The hole went through both sides of the sleeve and it was perfectly formed.

As I shifted the contents of the garment bag around to check for further damage I noticed a similar hole in the side of one white shirt and the sleeve of another white shirt. The black grease from the steel post had been wiped clean as it had passed through my suit and shirts.

As I look back on that day I remember thinking to myself how grateful I was that my suit or shirts hadn't been folded double or my boss might never been able to get the trunk shut and we might not have been able to get to the airport on time.