The Great White Bluffs Trunk Caper
A missing trunk leads to a frantic search, revealing only the power of a friendly favor.
White Bluffs last Monday came mighty near to having a good old fashioned honest-to-goodness trunk mystery. Just previous to her departure for California Sunday afternoon, while Mrs. C. A. Whitney was phoning J. B. Tromanhauser to take her trunk to the depot Monday morning, Mr. Whitney met J. W. Trigg on the street and told him to bring the trunk to the depot when he came out to town again. Then Mr. and Mrs. Whitney departed by auto for Yakima with the blissful feeling that all matters in connection with the trip had been well looked after. Monday morning, however, when Mr. Tromanhauser stopped at the Whitney porch for the trunk and it was nowhere in sight, there began a frantic search that seemed to open up a world of possibilities in the way of mysteries that were cleared up only when Mr. Whitney returned from Yakima Tuesday and found that Mr. Trigg had picked up the trunk on his way to Hanford Sunday afternoon and shipped it to Mrs. Whitney from that point.
“White Bluffs last Monday came mighty near to having a good old fashioned honest-to-goodness, trunk mystery.”
In an era of localized trust, a miscommunicated chore could feel like a genuine 'mystery.' Today, our transit networks and tracking apps have eliminated the suspense of a misplaced bag, though the neighborly spirit of the early 20th-century frontier has largely vanished with it.
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