Downsizing: 15 suitcases to Rio
A Schulz Family History essay
My family and I “downsized” our household at the end of my seventh 7th grade school year. Decades before the concept came to be. Decades before most people would need to do it. The whole family was involved. We thought it was just packing the house in prep for yet another move, but in reality it was downsizing.
In December of 1974, my dad was transferred to Westinghouse’s Rio De Janeiro office. The rest of us joined him after the end of the school year, expecting to stay there for 5 years. January through April, he spent 3 weeks a month in Rio, a few days in Monroeville at the home office, then a few days in Green Bay with us. Mid-May, he came home for the month.
The first order of business once he was home? My older sister’s high school graduation. Those doings meant that nothing was done for the packing and splitting up of the household until after graduation.
We couldn’t ship anything to Rio. Everything we would want there had to come with us on the plane. The rest of the house would go into storage crates — not to be opened until “…we come home for good.”
The overall pile of stuff to go had to be fairly small. For a family of 5, we would be taking 15 suitcases. It wasn’t as small a stash as it sounds. One of the suitcases was a huge yellow one my little sister could pretty much lie in when it was empty. There was a blue one just as big. The other 13 were pretty much regular sized, but imagine fitting your life in three suitcases apiece…
The suitcases didn’t really break down that way — there was too much “family” stuff that had to come with us. We three girls had to fit clothes and personal items into no more than two regular suitcases each. We did each get 2 carry-ons apiece. Those carry-ons? Family rule said we had to be able to carry our own, though I do remember my little sister getting some help. One of each parent’s carry-on would be the items bought duty free at the airport. Tobacco products, alcohol, etc. Requirements of adult life in the 1970's
The first step? Figure out what wasn’t getting packed.
At least most of it. You never get all the trash out of the house in moves like this. You hope that nothing gets missed which will spoil. And you REALLY hope that nothing gets packed that is food. Food brings critters and bugs. You don’t want that in long term storage. You want to make sure that most of the ashtrays and trash cans were empty before the movers came. Another thing that was always much harder than it should have been.
Step two? What do we want to come with us? It all goes in one room to get sorted.
Clothes, of course, but not the ones we thought. At that age, I remember being upset to get to Rio and find out it was winter. It was cold and wet. Not Green Bay cold, but not tropic warm either. Good thing mom had insisted on jeans and pants. My older sister remembers bringing shorts and not being able to wear them right away. Sis couldn’t convince mom to go shop for summer shirts/bloused before we got on the plane. She also remembers the problems even finding clothes for herself in Rio since there was only one plus size store in the whole city. She’s pretty sure that she and mom pretty much bought the store out — I think they did it more than once the year we were there.
This pile also got the important things like paperwork, books, toys, and games. Not a lot, mind you, but a few things. The piles we three girls wanted to take were much bigger than the space we had. Two cigar boxes of Legos for we younger two to share. (I remember claiming that we should get three boxes because dad played with them too!)
My older sister remembers being upset that she couldn’t “…couldn’t bring my records or record player. Never mind that the electricity was different.” She didn’t have to go through most of this step. Her Girl Scout troop took their final trip together before we left: A week on a houseboat on the Mississippi River. Once they were home, she went with her best friend’s family to their cottage for a week. Her getting to miss this step was one of the few things that she, Mom, and Dad, all agreed upon. Leaving the friends she had grown up with was much harder on her than on either of us younger ones.
We also saved space for a smattering of ornaments for the tree at Christmas. Medications. Make up. Shaving stuff. Paperwork for each of us in little green plastic folders: Health records. School records. Passports. Visas. Driver’s licenses for my folks. Address books.
Step three? Wean down the stuff in step two…
Think about it… Guess at what you will need and make it fit in suitcases. It isn’t just the amount of stuff. It’s the size as well. Those two huge suitcases? They didn’t just hold more stuff… they held bigger stuff. My family runs tall. My dad is six foot four. My older sister is five foot six. The rest of us were between those heights. Our family has big feet, which means big shoes. Big clothes. My older sister and mom were adult women — they needed space for stuff that we wouldn’t find down there.
While we had some idea of what we would be able to find in Rio, we needed to be sure we could survive until the right stores could be found. We were a family of readers. There had to be enough books for the flights and the waiting times. Girl Scouts all, we had to have records and handbooks. Uniforms. No camping gear — no space, unfortunately!
The big yellow suitcase was set aside for certain things that were necessities, but which couldn’t be easily brought into Brazil. Brazil is a Catholic country. In the 70’s, that meant no birth control pills — no matter why you needed them. That suitcase also got lots of unopened packages of something we didn’t need: Panty Hose. The tropics were into bare legs long before Oprah or anyone else here in the US. The top several layers of the yellow suitcase got my younger sister’s toys. (She was just barely 9 years old when we went to Rio.)
One of the suitcases was dedicated to my dad’s hobby: Trains. While in Green Bay, he had turned about a quarter of the basement into an elaborate HO gauge train set up. That couldn’t go with us. Instead, he turned one suitcase into an N-gauge layout. Spare train cars, track, accessories, transformers. All of it broken down to store in half the suitcase. The other half held the actual N-gauge layout.
It took several rounds to get the stuff weaned down and packed. It took time. It took patience. Neither of those were things we had a lot of right then. it all had to be done around the general end of the school year doings…. the graduation… the good-byes
Step four? One more sort…
There was an arrangement made — one huge packing pallet of stuff would be set aside as stuff that we would need right away when we moved home. There really wasn’t much difference in what went here vs. the other pallets, but there was some sorting done. This pallet also got some family stuff that my folks wanted to make sure didn’t get damaged. Things like my mother’s formal wear. The quilts my dad’s grandmother made for us all. Some household stuff. Things like that…
Step five? Movers come visit
Everything going with us in one room — watched to make sure none of it got into the moving trucks. Only other things in that room? Furniture. Once the furniture was out of that room, the door was closed — a sign went on the door — Stay Out!
Everything else in the house and the garage was packed by the movers. We may not have moved in over five years, but I knew the rules for mover day: Stay out of the way when you don’t have something to do. But be available for errands and carrying when you are needed. Part of my job was entertaining my little sister.
Another family tradition: Hope that the move gods take a just small sacrifices. Sacrifices that won’t cause long term problems. Movers pull the top off the family coffee table? Ouch. That’s a bad sacrifice, but a recoverable one. Finding out later that they went through the house packing the trashcans and ashtrays that hadn’t been emptied. Bigger ouch. (I never did understand that move. Why crumple packing paper and put it in a trashcan with ashes and papers in it? Why drop a full ashtray in the trashcan before adding the paper? Happened every move.)
Once the trucks left, we were off.
Off on the adventure of our lives. The adventure started the day the movers left. The family station wagon wasn’t big enough to hold all five of us and all the luggage, so a UHaul trailer was attached to it. We were flying to Rio from the East Coast, so we had a 700 plus mile drive in front of us. The first destination? Palmerton PA where my dad’s folks lived.
After a short visit with the grandparents, we made the trip to the Philadelphia PA Airport. Getting us all to the airport required the assistance of a friend of our Grandpa’s. Grandpa and Dad took the station wagon and Grandpa’s friend drove myself, my sisters, and my mother. Both Grandpa and his friend stayed until we were in the air. After the plane left, the grandparents drove the station wagon back home to Palmerton. Then, the car was delivered to the person who had already bought it.
The flight to Rio was a long one. When we arrived at the airport, we were tired and a bit cranky. Once we were off the plane and had gotten the luggage, the next step was customs. You should have seen the look on the custom agent’s face when he got to us and our bags. It is one of the few times the word “blanched” could be truthfully applied to someone’s face. He picked up the yellow suitcase as the first one to check. The five of us all tried hard not to look concerned. We KNEW what was in that suitcase could send us right back home, but we couldn’t say anything.
Remember earlier when I mentioned that the top few layers of that suitcase were my younger sister’s toys? When the customs agent opened the suitcase and saw a layer of naked Barbie dolls, it was a bit of a shock. He stuck his hand into the suitcase and came up with a handful of Barbie clothes and shoes. He dropped it back into the suitcase, closed it up, and waved us through. Close call. I have always wondered if he told his family about the strange Americans that came through his line that day.
Once we finished with customs, we went to the airport lounge. There, we were to wait for our ride to the apartment we would call home while in Rio. That ride was supposed to be from my dad’s secretary’s husband. As a travel agent, he was supposed to have access throughout the airport. Unfortunately, his airport pass had expired. We had to wait in an uncomfortable lounge for an hour or two while he got it renewed.
Once the pass was renewed, we loaded all 5 of us and all 25 cases into the large car he had driven to pick us up. Next stop: The Hotel Leblon in Rio. The first of many hotels we and our suitcases would invade. I don’t remember the ride to the hotel. Honestly, I barely remember that hotel stay at all. Luckily, my sister did remember. Hotel on the beach in Rio. Something most would envy. I know we enjoyed it at first, but not for long….
Two rooms, five people, 15 suitcases, 10 carry on bags. Hard to move around in the rooms. (Not the last time we would live through that.) Shortly after arriving, the parents found an apartment for us all. An apartment we thought we would be in for the next five years.
That nice long stay in Rio wasn’t to be. After just a year in Rio, my dad got transferred to Manila. Unlike the trip to Rio, we could ship stuff to Manila from Rio and from storage. So, we did. Which is where this story should end, but there was another chapter to it that we were all about to learn.
Back to the pallets…
When we got back to the US for the summer, my folks went to the moving company’s warehouse to go through the huge packing crates. They wanted to find the things that would get shipped slow boat to Manila. Knowing it might be hard to find more formal clothes for my mom, they asked to get into the first pallet as well as the rest of them. That is when we found out that disaster had struck.
The first pallet hadn’t been kept safe. It wasn’t even kept. It had been lost along the way. The moving company said the stuff was in another warehouse. My folks didn’t have time to wait and look for it. They went through the other pallets, splitting off the stuff to be shipped to Manila. Hoping the company would find the other pallet. Hoping the treasures weren’t gone.
But that is — as they say — another story… :)
There are family stories and family memories that ring in every family’s past. Stories we think everyone else in the family remembers as we do. Stories we want to pass on before they die completely.
My family is no different, I suppose, but the stories from a few of the years are not like yours. In this series, I hope to share pieces of those pieces of our lives. Some are happy, some are not. But they are all as I remember them — with help from my dad and my older sister..
