Long Long Trail

Prelude

My first book, about playing with the Stars of Show Biz, is titled Show Biz from the Back Row. Some readers have asked me about the strange title. It’s really quite simple: the Back Row is where the brass section sits, in almost every band or orchestra, and the brass section (that’s MY section) is where I belong.

Why call this one A Long Long Trail? A couple of reasons. There’s a long, long trail a-winding is the name of the first song I ever heard, and music became a large part of my life — I even made my living as a musician.

The second reason is because it was a Long Trail for most of us, to develop the skills to develop as a musician, and hone our skills so we could be a part of the music business: teaching, playing in a band or the studio recording scene, or becoming a member of a symphony orchestra.

Anyway, when I was three or four, I’d hear my dad sing that song every morning and sometimes at night, if I had trouble going to sleep. I loved his voice, warm and low, and him singing, just for me.

This Trail is what happens to and with me, as I grow and move toward making a living as a trumpeter.

These are true stories about what was happening in my life, that pointed me to music, but also when I tried some other profession. You may be amused, confused or interested, but it’s just what happened on the journey on my own Long, Long Trail. It also includes a lot of people I met along the way, some famous, some not.

A warning! I may jump around in time from a happening in my childhood or young adulthood and how this experience connects to my career in the music business. Let’s saddle up and get on The Trail.

In 1929, my folks, both Canadians, have come to Southern California from Vancouver Island, which is just 25 miles out from the mainland of British Columbia. They tell me that Los Angeles seems like a young city with lots of opportunity, and it sounds good to them.

I guess their timing was off a bit. They get here just in time for The Crash as it’s called, when the Stock Market plunges from very high to the bottom of the barrel, in the era known as The Great Depression.

Two years later I’m born.

My folks are immigrants, but they tell me they want to belong to their new country so they become citizens as fast as they can.

My dad (his name is Bill too) makes $15.00 a week at The Wilson Meat Packing Company. He tells me that he spends all day in the basement, where he has a hose and nozzle, like a gun, and shoots steam and sugar into hams to make ’em Tendermade. My mom, Eileen, is a registered nurse. Some weeks, she works too, to help out. Many years later, she tells me how they did it.

She works one week a month on the night shift at Good Samaritan Hospital. So when Dad goes to work seven am, she is just getting home to take care of me. She tells me later it was kinda tough, but she never lets on about it, so at the time I never hear about how little sleep she gets. But we both take a nap in the afternoons. She also reads books — Robin Hood, Swiss Family Robinson, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates — to me every day, and we go to Westlake Park, and I feel how much she loves me.

My folks and I live in an apartment on Reno Street in downtown Los Angeles. My mom and dad listen to our radio almost every night. And we never miss listening to Jack Benny on Sunday evening. They laugh a lot, and I like that.

They also listen to a radio program called Manhattan Merry-Go-Round. And sometimes they dance to the music, and even pick me up so the three of us dance! But even when I’m just three, four or five, I know what I do or don’t like, and this is music that I don’t like at all.

There’s this orchestra, and two singers and a bunch of people that sing sort of behind the two soloists. Mom says they are a chorus. She tells me they sing songs from Broadway shows. The whole thing sounds like they are all playing the same song with the same notes together at the same time, too loud and too fast.

There are two singers, Lanny Ross and Jessica Dragonette, but they sing so loud and high it makes my ears ring.

Don’t get me wrong; I like music and singing, like when my dad is shaving in the morning and always sings, There’s a long, long trail a-winding, into the land of my dreams. He doesn’t sing loud, but his voice is low and soft and steady, and it sounds beautiful to me. When he sings this song, I feel kind of happy, and a little sad too, at the same time.

Mom lets me have her pots and pans to play on with wooden spoons, and that’s my kinda music … even though I don’t play as fast as the music on Manhattan Merry-Go-Round goes!

Years later, I’m in a band that has a drum attached to each player’s music stand, and the band makes a record for Capitol Records at their studio. Not because I’ve suddenly become a drummer, but because Hal Blaine, who is well known as the most recorded drummer in music biz history, is the leader, and he and a record company choose some players who are part of The Wrecking Crew. That’s a group of musicians, most of them rhythm section players, who played the tracks that made hits for all the big Rock and Roll singers and groups, like The Beach Boys, The Righteous Brothers, Jan & Dean, The Monkees and so on. Just name any group who’s had big hits, and it’s a good bet that the Crew had some part of the success.

Most of these records need brass, woodwinds, strings and extra percussion added, and that’s where Ollie Mitchell, Jim Horn, Plas Johnson and I and a whole group of ‘hornists’ and ‘stringists’ and so on, come in. There were many, many more musicians involved, but space and time preclude me from trying to list them all. Just look at the CD covers or the LP jackets.

FIRST CHORUS: THE CITY OF ANGELS; BIG EXCITEMENT IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD

I’m a four year old kid driving my brand new Christmas present, a yellow racer with black stripes, on the sidewalk along Reno Street in Los Angeles. It is 1934, and I see blue sky, bright sun, and tall palm trees that tower over me as I drive up and down the sidewalk in front of our apartment house.

I am waiting for my dad to get home from work. Mothers push baby carriages up and down. A couple of big kids throw a football around. Me, I pedal while I wait. I really have the hang of this pedaling business—I am going at least sixty miles an hour. My legs are going so fast that the pedals are a blur. I look up to see that everybody has cleared off the sidewalk in front of me. I guess I am going so fast that I have scared everybody off.

Just then I see a big man dressed like Jungle Jim in the movies, coming down the sidewalk. He holds a shiny metal chain that leads to a great big cat just like in my jungle animal book, that Mom and Dad read with me. It is orange colored with black marks all over it, and mean looking cat eyes, and long whiskers. I remember—I saw one of these in one of my jungle animal books; it’s a cheetah, the fastest four legged animal in the world, and it is padding silently along, right toward me. It has the longest, reddest tongue hanging out over the sharpest white teeth I have ever seen. The big cat closes its jaws, and sniffs the air. It smells something—maybe something to eat. I know! It smells me.

I try to get up, but my legs have turned to Jell-O. Jungle Jim and this cheetah are coming closer, closer, and suddenly the thing stops and growls—sort of a soft rooowwwrrr sound. I am done for. I am going to be dinner for this big old jungle cat. All of a sudden I feel two strong hands grab me and pull me up and out of my race car. I go shooting up in the air, and then come down, gently, onto my dad’s shoulders. He moves off the sidewalk, and up to the front door of our apartment house.

My dad has come home just in time to save my life. We watch as the cheetah checks out my racer, sniffs it, then turns toward me. I know what he is thinking—he has just missed a snack. I shudder, but Dad readjusts me to a higher perch, and says, That’s some cat, eh, old son?

After Jungle Jim and his cheetah move on down the block, Dad strides out to scoop up the racer with one hand while he keeps me on his shoulders. I feel safe with him—nothing or nobody can beat up on my dad and me. We go inside and up the stairs.

I know my dad is wonderful; he’s strong, but gentle. I am a ‘William’ just like him, and I am proud of that. His bronzed, high cheek-boned Cree Indian face and black hair is quite a contrast to my mother. Now everybody thinks their mom is pretty, but I know my mom is; I hear my dad say that my mom is his red-haired Irish beauty.

My dad carries me on his shoulders as we go upstairs. We talk about the big cat and somehow he makes it funny and he gets us both laughing. We pass our neighbors, the O’Riordans. My dad says Hello.

Mr. O’Riordan is really pale with a long face and red hair that sticks up like Stan Laurel’s and he likes to make me laugh by pulling on it, just like Laurel does. He just nods and smiles at me, but he seems to be in a big hurry today.

My dad and I go along to our apartment.

Mom wonders why that man was on our sidewalk with a cheetah on a chain. Dad tells her that there aren’t enough laws to stop people from having animals like that as pets right in the city.

All I know is how scared I was till my dad came home and saved me.

Mom lets me visit our neighbors. Mrs. O’Riordan makes a good chocolate cake—not as good as my mom’s—and Mr. O’Riordan gives me more ice cream if I want. He is my friend. I like to watch Mr. O’Riordan lock and unlock his apartment’s front door, because it has four locks and we only have one, and we never bother to lock it.

This evening, just before dinner, we hear cars speeding up our street, and some sirens too. We run to the windows and see them stop fast, and policemen jump out. They are right in front of our apartment building. Then one man looks up toward us and shouts through what my mom says is a megaphone. He yells,

All right, O’Riordan! We’ve got the place surrounded. Come out with your hands up.

We see all our other neighbors’ heads pop out their windows too. Mrs. O’Riordan’s head pops out last, then back in, really fast. The man shouts it again. We can see that our apartment has a whole line of policemen that looks like it goes right around our building. Some of them run to the front door. And then we hear a lot of noise and running down our hall. The man outside keeps shouting. Mom opens our door a little. We peek out and see policemen kick the O’Riordans’ front door in! We pull back in, and Mom locks our door. Why are they doing this? I ask, but Mom runs back to the window, and so do I.

A minute later, Mr. O’Riordan comes out the front door down below with his hands stuck up in the air, and the policeman pulls his arms down and puts handcuffs on him. The policemen open the police car door and shove him inside. I don’t like how the policemen are being so mean, so I lean out, and yell as loud as I can,

Hey, you leave my friend alone! Mr. O’Riordan is a good man!

Mr. O’Riordan pulls back out of the car a little, and looks up at me and smiles a little bit. Then the policeman pushes Mr. O’Riordan’s head down and into the police car. All the policemen get into their cars.

The one with Mr. O’Riordan in it turns on its siren, and they speed off down Reno Street. After we can’t see their taillights or hear their sirens, we pull our heads back, and sit down and have dinner. I am so sleepy I can hardly finish my chocolate cake, and Dad picks me up and carries me off to bed.

Tonight there is no bedtime story, but before I go to sleep I hear my mom tell Dad that the police say that Mr. O’Riordan is a gangster on the lam, and he has been hiding out right down the hall. He is Red O’Riordan of the famous Detroit Purple Gang. She knows everything, and what she doesn’t know right off, she finds out. As I drift off, I hear her say,

Just imagine—I let our son go into those people’s apartment. He could have been murdered.

My dad tells her,

It’s all right, Eileen. Nothing happened, and he’s safe in his bed. Now what do you think about goin’ to see that new Clark Gable movie Saturday at the …

That night I have a scary dream, just like a movie I’m watching. I’m on this big screen, running through a steamy hot, scary jungle with Mr. O’Riordan, and a big cat is chasing us, and Manhattan Merry-Go-Round music is playing really loud. The cheetah gets really close, when all of a sudden my dad drives up in my racer and pulls us both in, and we race away with our siren going full blast, leaving the cheetah licking his chops.

SECOND CHORUS: MOVIES, MAC & MABEL, AND MAKE BELIEVE

Today is August 8, 1936. It is Saturday, and it is the hottest it has ever been on this date or something, but this does not mean as much as the fact that this is my fifth birthday. People in the Reno Arms apartment house smile at me. Some of our neighbors invite me into their apartments, but I am not allowed to go to just any apartment.

It is different with the couple down the hall—it is all right to go to Mac and Mabel’s. My mom says, They’re movie people. You can go over there, but only for a little while. She knows who is good or bad, and today Mac and Mabel are okay in my mother’s eyes. I’m glad that I can visit them, because they are fun and make me laugh.

Mac is tall, taller than my dad, and has big muscles too, just like Dad, but he works on movies as something called a prop man.

Mabel is pretty, and she does makeup on movie actresses. She always wants to do my mom, but Mom won’t let her. She says, I don’t want anybody fussing over my face like that.

Mac and Mabel work at Paramount Studios, and they love for me to come over because they don’t have any kids, and they want a baby but can’t get one, and my mom knows all that and she feels sorry, so she lets me go almost every day.

It is just past my breakfast time, and I get to go to Mac and Mabel’s. Mabel opens the door when I knock, and laughs and squeals when she sees it’s me. Her hair tickles my face as she sweeps me up in her arms and carries me into their cool, dim-lit apartment.

Mac comes in with a cup of coffee for him and a smile for me, and messes up my hair, which Mom had carefully combed and plastered down.

Mac tells me to sit down because they have birthday presents for me. I am really anxious to see what they are going to give me. Maybe it will be something special because they work in another world.

That world is The Movies, a wonderful place that I get a glimpse of whenever Mom and Dad can spare the forty-five cents it costs for us to get into the Wiltern Theater, where there are big high ceilings and paintings on the walls, and velvet ropes, and ushers with white gloves.

What happens up on the huge silver screen in that air conditioned darkness is magic—and sometimes terrifying, like when the evil Chinese puts Clark Gable’s foot into an iron boot in China Seas (my mom bites her knuckles; my dad looks tense). Sometimes it’s funny like when Laurel and Hardy throw pies and Jean Harlow slips and falls, and gets up with a custard pie stuck on her seat.

But I’m at my friends’ apartment, waiting, wondering, as Mabel brings out two wrapped presents, with big fancy bows.

Mac looks at me, waiting, and says, Go ahead, kid! They aren’t going to unwrap themselves! I start carefully, not tearing the paper which we always save, but big Mac laughs in his deep, throaty voice and tells me, Rip ’em open, kid! I open the box to find—a knife! It is a real, long bladed knife with a shiny blade and a long black handle, just like the one the evil Oriental had at Clark Gable’s throat in the movie. Oh boy! Now I can run through the Reno Arms with a bandana around my head, and cut a swath through anyone who stands in my way, especially Mr. Ragnazzi, the manager, who my folks both hate. I’ve heard that if our rent is late, he will do something bad.

Suddenly, I’m kinda scared when Mac takes the knife from my hand and tells me it has a secret.

He shows me a button on the handle, then he swings the deadly-looking knife over his head, and drives the blade right at his big chest.

He lets out a bloodcurdling yell — he plunges the knife all the way in, up to the hilt! Mac falls in a big heap at my feet.

I leap out of my chair. My best friend, the giver of great gifts is dead at my feet.

Just then, Mac looks up from the carpet, opens one eye, and winks!

He grins, gets up, and pushes the button and the long, wicked- looking blade springs out of its hiding place in the handle. I want to take my present home and show my mom and dad, but Mac says to me, Wait, Billy!

Mac and Mabel have this radio. It’s taller than me, and somewhere on top Mac opens the lid and does something, then pulls out a round flat black thing in brown paper and tells me, This is a recording of Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans jazz band!

He puts it inside the open top. Music starts playing. In our apartment we only hear music when it’s on a radio show.

Then Mac picks me up and takes Mabel’s hand and they start to dance, while Mac holds me. My folks do that too lots of times, but what really gets me is the music. It’s not like Manhattan Merry-Go Round!

This music is really special because it’s not big and blasty. It’s a small kinda sound. Mac tells me, There’s a cornet … and that’s a clarinet … an’ that kinda low sound, that’s a trombone … This is New Orleans Style Jazz!

I like this music. I think if I had my wooden spoons and Mom’s pots and pans, I could maybe play along with this band, ’cause they just play easy and not too fast like those radio shows my folks listen to.

The recording stops, and I hear Mom at the door. Mac sets me down, and hands me my presents. Mabel and Mom talk, but I’m in a hurry to get home. I think I remember to say ‘thank you’ as I rush out past Mom, and run back to our apartment.

Mom follows me in, and Dad’s there too, in our living room. I get up on the sofa, and yell, ‘Watch!’

I raise the knife up and press the button just like big Mac showed me and I drive the knife down into my chest.

My dad springs forward as he yells, "No, son!’

My mother, who’s a registered nurse, screams and runs toward me. I just laugh when I pull the knife ‘out,’ but it’s just the knife handle, until I push the magic button, and the blade pops back out.

There is a great gush of relief, and ‘Thank Gods’ and stuff.

My dad wants to see how the knife works. As I show him, my mom rushes down the hall to Mac and Mabel’s. We can hear her angry voice and Mac’s low rumbling one, It was just a joke!

Later this day, I get to see my Auntie May and my Cousin Lynnie, and open the present they brought, but I can’t go see Mac and Mabel for a week. I cannot even listen to Jack Armstrong either, but I don’t really care.

This birthday has been a big deal for me. I know that Mom and Dad love me, because they both tell me that a lot. But now I know that what I do can affect them a whole lot—like what I did today with this trick knife. Now I’m sure that whatever I say or do is important to them. They care about me a whole bunch, and that’s a good feeling.

But I really want to go down to Mac’s so he’d play me some more of that New Orleans music while I play with my wonderful new knife, and just maybe Mabel will lend me a pot ’n a spoon so I can play along.

~ ~ ~

Now we modulate to when I get to play that New Orleans music that Mac played for me.

It’s 1952, and I’m a member of the 775th US Air Forces Band, and the Korean Police Action or Conflict, or War (because guys I have met went over there and died there), or whatever you want to call it, is happening. I’m lucky to be in a band, but even bands get sent to Korea, and one whole band is killed defending Inchon. Thank God I’m in Tucson, Arizona.

THIRD CHORUS: I GET TO PLAY NEW ORLEANS STYLE WITH CURLY IN THE AIR FORCE

I’m in this 775th Air Forces Band, with quite a few guys my age, whose fathers play music for a living on the radio, or recordings and TV shows, and for the soundtracks for films. My dad is in real estate; he’s a broker.

Mel Pollan’s a wonderful bassist and a funny guy (more later), and his dad, Al, is a fine bassist, who plays on lots of recordings and films. John Bambridge plays the most beautiful clarinet I’ve ever heard, but at breakfast he has to sing some three-part Bach chorales with his folks before they eat. His mom sings in choruses around LA, and his dad plays bass and tuba on staff at a film studio.

John Williams plays trombone with the Band, but plays piano with the dance band, and with a trio that he, Mel Pollan and John Bambridge (who ends up writing, and playing on The Tonight Show with Doc Severinsen) put together, and also in our New Orleans style sextet, that plays various gigs on base as well as the NCO and Officers Clubs. John has two brothers Don and Jerry, both fine drummers and percussionists. His dad was a busy drummer in New York, where he played on the radio for the Hit Parade, and, you guessed it! The Manhattan–Merry-Go-Round! Then, as I remember, John’s dad brings the family out to Hollywood, and he gets a contract to play at Columbia Studios.

Our Dixieland group also plays every week at a Children’s Hospital that specializes in treating children with burns. We try to figure out something to amuse and entertain these wonderful, brave little kids.

In between tunes, we go around and talk to the kids. I take my cornet, and I let kids, one at a time, push the valves. I blow the horn, to make funny, gurgly noises. Every kid I do it with likes it.

However, the Tucson newspaper gets onto what we’re doing, and one Tuesday a reporter and photographer show up when we’re already playing tunes for the burn victims. When we take a break we show the little patients our instruments, or just talk.

I come over to one little guy’s bed; he knows about making noises with me blowing and him pushing the valves on my little cornet.

The small patient gets to make some funny sounds, and he’s really happy and smiles and holds out his little hands to me, just as the cameraman snaps a flash shot.

Then, without thinking, the jerk with the camera pops the flashbulb out, onto the little guy’s bed!

The little guy reacts by trying to grab it. Oh god, the bulb is burning HOT and the kid picks it up, and drops it and screams!

Nurses and a doctor come running, and I grab the flashbulb up off the bed. The newspaper photographer stumbles and bumbles. After a moment or two, I gently take the crying little guy’s hand, and smile, and put his hand onto the bell of my cornet. It’s cool and he lets me do it. Then we gradually get back to making funny noises with my cornet, and the tears are replaced by a timid smile.

Johnny (Curly) Williams, the kid with the mop of curly red hair, is showing a gang of other little patients how to tickle the ivories. He’s always good with music and kids, but he knows what he really wants … he wants to write movie music. We finish playing and head back to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Now we modulate back to my own childhood in the ’30s, and another first touch with music

FOURTH CHORUS: GOING TO HELL IN THE RED CAR

It is the summer of 1937, and I am worried about my dad. He still comes walking home, and he picks me up and then hugs my mom and he sings, There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding for me. I like that a lot.

But at night, I can hear him cough … it seems like he coughs all night long. I hear my mom say his color is not good, and she’s a nurse, and knows about that, and the wheezing we hear in his chest.

She makes an appointment with Dr. Askey, who was the doctor that she says delivered me, and we go to his office to find out what’s wrong with my dad.

Dr. Askey listens to his chest with his stethoscope, and has him have a chest x-ray. Then he sits down with all three of us, and tells us that my dad’s got what he calls a significant amount of congestion in his lungs.

Dad tells him that he works in a part of the Wilson Meat Packing plant where they make Tender-Made Hams. The reason the hams are so are tender is that my dad and the other men stick big needles connected to steam hoses into the hams so that they can shoot high-pressure steam and saline into the meat. The cellar where this tenderizing is done soon fills with hot steam, which the workers breathe for ten to twelve hours at a time.

Apparently this has tenderized not only Wilson Company’s hams, but also my dad’s lungs. He says it’s like Hell, working in that cellar. I know about Hell from church, and how hot it is. The doctor tells us that Dad has become a victim of chronic bronchitis, and it’ll takes years for the night coughs to stop.

Dr. Askey writes a letter to the company that convinces the Wilson management to get Dad out of the steam and into the fresh air.

Dad is going to be a salesman, because he’s smart and he gets along with people very well.

We are going to move out to Riverside, California, about 60 miles east, because it has a dry climate, and maybe his lungs will dry out too. We will go to Riverside when he gets settled in his new job.

Today is now Friday, the day that Mom and I will travel out to join Dad in this Riverside place. I don’t really want to leave our apartment, and the lake in Westlake Park, but I think it will be nice to live beside a river. There is a Los Angeles River, but it only has water in it when we have floods—besides, the L.A. River is mostly cement. So I am looking forward to Riverside a little bit as we take our suitcases and a few boxes of household things, with Mac and Mabel’s help, down to the train stop.

We get on the Red Car, a sort of oversize streetcar painted red with a cowcatcher on the front. We climb aboard and the Red Car starts rolling slowly through downtown Los Angeles, then picks up speed as we move out of the city. The further we go, I notice, the hotter it gets. There is no afternoon ocean breeze; the lake and green grass of Westlake Park have been replaced by sand. The hotter it gets, the more I am convinced that we are going to Hell and I wonder why? I don’t know … Maybe it’s something I’ve done, or didn’t do. Maybe God saw what I was doing when Aimee Semple McPherson was leading everybody in prayer; everybody but me. I wasn’t praying — I was practicing making faces; so I don’t know — maybe we’re going to Hell — but Mom says,

Don’t be silly, that’s not it at all. It’s just a little hotter out in Riverside.

She is right about that—I have never been so hot. The Red Car clatters along at forty-five miles per hour, and when I stick my face out the window, the breeze that I feel is the only thing keeping my red face from exploding.

We do pass through groves of orange and lemon trees in blossom. They look wonderful and smell sweet. Things start to look better as we pass farms and fields with cows and horses.

The Red Car slows and the conductor bellows, Riverside! — All off for Riverside! The steel wheels grind, and the Red Car stops — but so does the breeze. It is even hotter than before. I wonder if Hell is paved with sand like this place.

I can see my dad by the platform. He’s standing on the running board of a black car with the Wilson Co. emblem on the door. We get off, and we all hug, and I ask about the car. We’ve never had one before. Dad explains that it is the company’s — a ’35 Chevrolet business coupe. We load her up and off we go to the Gates Hotel.

The sign outside says it has refrigerated air conditioning. We go inside. It is cool. In the lobby there are some of the oldest looking people I have ever seen, sitting in old overstuffed chairs. They look as old as this old place. The lobby has pressed metal ceilings, and on the walls there are paintings of sand. Dad leads the way to the most frightening looking thing in the lobby. It is an open cage that’s the elevator, not like the nice big closed-in ones the May Company has, back home in Los Angeles. I see a bunch of wheels and pulleys and steel cables; all this machinery is hanging down right above us and on the wall behind us. I look at my dad and ask, Is this okay? He smiles and says, It’s just machinery, old son!

I don’t care how machinery works—especially if it looks like this. I just don’t want to be close to any of it. But I have no choice. He puts his hand on my shoulder, so we get aboard this scary thing, and the old man that runs it, grins and shows he doesn’t have any teeth!

That really scares me as he says, Come right on in. He pulls the folding metal gate closed behind us.

Now we’re trapped. He pulls up on the shiny brass handle, turns and smiles at me again, but that isn’t the worst part. The elevator clanks and clunks, and all the machinery starts to move. The elevator gives a sigh and a violent shudder and starts up. The awful thing shakes, groans and vibrates every foot of the way. Dad says he thinks I’ll like riding on this awful, scary thing—he tells me with a smile that our room is on the seventh floor, so I will have lots of time to enjoy every ride, up and down. But I’m in a panic all the way. We arrive with a jerk and a crunch—Mr. No-Teeth opens the gate, and we get out and go down the hall to our room. The old man grabs up our biggest suitcases