First, let's go to the Land of the Lost. No, not where your socks go on laundry day - nobody's solved that one yet. But if you're looking for where your lost luggage ends up, the place to start is Scottsboro, Alabama...home to the airlines' lost and not found store. Melanie Peeples has our story.

Lost Luggage

By Melanie Peeples, 5/25/2001

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The Unclaimed Baggage store has become one of the top tourist attractions in Alabama, so it only made sense that I round up some friends: Elizabeth, Torin, Rebecca, and Josh and make it a roadtrip. We arrive one Saturday afternoon, the store beckoning to us as we approach the single-story, block-long building.

Rebecca: "Oh, I see the clothes, the unclaimed clothes! Alright. This is officially the biggest store I have ever been in. 7-thousand new items a day. Now we need to talk about..."

Torin: "I was really, I was expecting suitcases and things like that, but this is like a Gap or something."

Torin: "Actually, maybe that's not so surprising, you're very nervous or something."

Josh: "Well, once you've used it what do you need to claim it for?"

Torin: "No, it must be people going to their wedding and then they don't have the dress. NO, but, Can you imagine, you're going to your wedding, you have your dress and you forget your luggage, what are you going to do? You'd have to buy one off the rack!"

Josh: "You know, some of this stuff is personalized!"

Barbara: "We sell a lot of wedding bands. We have a lot of men's wedding bands. A lot."

Melanie: "Now what does that tell you that you have more men's than women's?"

Barbara: "Well, it tells me that they don't get home with it and I wonder how they explained having it off their finger."

Bryan: "You see what kind of books people are reading. You know, what's the latest electronic gadget, CD player, the latest jewelry or camera."

Melanie: "If this were like Pompeii and there was a volcano that covers this place all at once and just freezes everything in place. If we were to discover it a thousand years from now you could learn a lot about society by just coming into this store."

Bryan: "We happen to see a lot of wheelchairs that come through that are lost from travel. So, hopefully those people just got healed or something or were able to take up their crippled bodies and walk, perhaps."

Basically, anything people travel with can be bought here. Shampoo, conditioner, bagpipes. All kinds of suitcases. A story behind each one. And a question on every shopper's mind. Thankfully, we had the store's marketing manager, Brenda Cantrell to answer it.

Josh: "Does anyone ever come in and say, 'Hey! This was mine!'"

Brenda: "No. We've had one story of a gentleman from Atlanta who was traveling through on business, had never been to the store before. And so he came through in March and he sees this pair of ski boots and thinks, Oh, these are great color, looks about the size for my wife. So he buys them for 45 dollars and takes them home to Atlanta and he lifts up the flap and they had her maiden name in them and they were her boots. And so she got her boots back."

Bryan: "You don't think about this kind of thing being shipped on an airplane but we had a guidance system for an F-16 fighter plane. It was in this box, this shock-proof container. It was a gyroscopic guidance mechanism and we got that back to the Navy. We didn't really have a use for it. But what was funny is the story that was going around the Naval intelligence circles was that the Iranians had stolen it and we said no, it's actually here in Scottsboroo, Alabama."

Rebecca and Josh: "All right, the 6-dollar Guy Laroche shoes. The men's button down shirt - all cotton. That's a good find, Josh. Thanks. 8-dollars. Okay, my favorite purchase, the 35-dollar Gucci sunglasses. 15-dollar Kenneth Cole glasses frames. Oh, the fifteen dollar Pierre Cardin tie. The Brooks Brothers tie with the geese on it. My favorite..."

Brenda: "Thank you so much. Ya'll have a great trip! Ya'll come back now, you hear?"