James David Armstrong - Part IV: Luggage Handlers

     A few weeks ago as I was claiming my suitcase at the carousel at the airport, someone else's suitcase came by all busted up with the items spilling out.  Someone had tried to tape it back together.  It made me think of the horror stories that you see every once in awhile on news programs.  I am glad it wasn't mine.
     The suitcase reminded me of a story in the Obituary of James David Armstrong¹.   
     "In 1858 he came to Illinois, reaching Bloomington by way of Chicago, where he recalls an incident to prove that the roughness of the baggage handlers of those days was not the fiction of  a paper joke but an unpleasant reality.  Mr. Armstrong had to borrow a hammer and nail up the pieces of his oaken 'kit' which the railroaders had wrecked."  
    Seems like the more things change the more they stay the same.  
 
1.   “Passing of a Nestor” Pantograph, Bloomington, Illinois March 30, 1906