Lundy: Backpack comeback? Comments
Landing in the old emailbox this week was a press release titled “The Backpack Makes a Comeback.”
Comeback? I hadn’t realized the backpack had fallen out of favor.
Turns out the press release was from a company called Yak Pak that’s “pioneered the trend in bringing fashionable prints to the backpack market, thus transforming these bags that were once simply schoolyard staples into a fashion accessory that’s meant to be more than carried — it’s meant to be worn!”
I attemped to include the attached photo here, but it was going to take more work than I had time for. Sorry. Just think bright and garish.
Contrary to what the PR writer would have me believe, I still look at the backpack as a schoolyard staple — though it wasn’t always so, at least not in my world.
Unlike the elementary-schoolers of today, nobody had a backpack at my grade school, Riverside, in Milwaukie. I don’t recall anybody carrying anything other than maybe a book or two, a lunch box or sack, and maybe some PE clothes.
In junior high, many of the guys, including yours truly, carried books and other stuff in a smallish gym bag bearing the logo and colors of wherever we’d be going to high school: Putnam or Milwaukie usually, in some cases Clackamas or LaSalle. We then kept using those bags after getting to high school.
Backpacks, as I’d learned from my older brothers, were something college kids used. Duane had an Army rucksack, Craig a bright orange civilian model, both devoid of the zippers that make the modern backback easy to open and close.
I ended up with a dark blue Jansport model that got me through four years at OSU, then never gave much thought to the whole backpack thing again until my oldest kid, now 6 weeks shy of 22 and a senior at OSU, was about to start kindergarten. Among the supplies he’d need was a backpack.
As luck would have it, I just happen to have a photo of the Mickey Mouse pack with which he began his educational career; the shot was taken, with both Bob and me unawares, by my former colleague, Tony Overman, and it’s been on my desk for at least 15 years:
Yes, as a matter of fact, my shirt does say “River Rat,” and the pictured rodent is in fact holding a can of Coors; the shirt was kind of a nod to the many hours I spent as a kid at the Clackamas River … yes, drinking the occasional Coors at the same time.
Anyway, Bob’s need for a backpack as a 5-year-old signaled for me that times had really changed in the area of student luggage since I was in school.
So when did backpacks take hold as a schoolyard staple? Anyone out there know?
And also speaking of backpacks, I’ve noticed the ones kids, even little kids, use are getting bigger all the time. Some of the ones I see are so large, I could pack in enough supplies for a hike across Oregon.
Hope we don’t end up with a generation of kids with back/shoulder injuries from the weight of all the stuff, whatever it is, that they’re hauling around.
