We didn’t go out of town much when I was growing up, but when we did my dad never failed to pack what he called his “dopp kit.” I didn’t understand that name in those days.
It was a tan canvas toiletry bag about half the size of a shoebox. He took his razor, shaving cream, toothbrush, toothpaste and a bottle of green Mennen’s after shave lotion in it.
Dopp kits are apparently a big part of our society now. Some professional basketball players and other rich athletes are carrying the bags as a status symbol.
A rookie in the NBA bought a designer Louis Vuitton dopp kit for $700 to impress fans. They say superstar LeBron James has a Goyard brand bag that costs several thousand dollars.
You can get a camouflage Tom Ford bag for $1,850. It’s strange that anybody would pay that much money for a bag to hold their hairbrush and get it in camouflage colors to conceal it.
All that Tom Ford stuff is expensive. Regina likes their men’s cologne and tried to get me to buy some. I refuse to spend more on a bottle of cologne that I paid for the last suit I bought.
My dad never referred to his toiletry bag as anything but a “dopp kit.” I discovered later in life that the bags were named for the guy who invented the little case in the 1920s.
American soldiers were issued the toiletry bags for years, and they were always called dopp kits. Samsonite bought the brand name, and the dopp label was not used much until lately when the bags became so trendy.
I have always called my toiletry bag a shaving kit, and I paid $12 for the last one I bought. It is not big enough now to hold all the things I need to carry, so Regina got me a larger one last Christmas.
It is not a Louis Vuitton or Tom Ford, but it probably cost more than the last one I bought or the canvas dopp kit my dad got from Sears. That’s where he bought everything.
How my dad got everything he needed in that little kit is a mystery to me. I have to take both my old bag and the new one Regina got me on trips now to hold all my toiletry items.
The bags are stuffed with shaving cream, a safety razor, a bar of soap, shampoo, conditioner, toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, deodorant, a hairbrush, a comb, floss, some gel stuff for my hair, chargers for my phone and toothbrush, nail clippers, a medicine bottle for vitamins and low dose aspirin and band-aids.
Band-aids are essential, because those low dose aspirin that most folks my age take to keep our blood flowing also make us bleed profusely if we get the slightest scratch.
That’s probably because our skin gets really thin the older we get. There are some advantages to that. When I go to a doctor now, they don’t have to do X-rays. They just hold me up to a bright light.
Packing in general has become a hassle for me. I would like to just throw things in a little backpack like my granddaughters do and hit the road.
But I wear size 13 shoes, so an extra pair of shoes and those two shaving bags will fill up a good-sized suitcase even before I put any clothes in it.
When I left home to go to college, my mother packed all the jeans, shoes, t-shirts, socks, underwear, toiletries and everything else I owned in a cardboard box and still had room to send some peanut butter and jelly in it.
Over the years when a bunch of us played in tennis tournaments across the state and country, we got those gigantic, fancy Nike and Wilson tennis bags for our gear. My partner Jack Brittain, Jr., carried all his things in a big black garbage bag.
If we forgot our caps, socks or wristbands, Brittain always had extras in the makeshift tennis bag that made him the most memorable member of our team among the people we played.
The next time I travel, my plan is to put my vast array of toiletries in a cardboard box or a black garbage bag like Brittain used and leave those dopp kits at home.
I just hope Louis Vuitton and Tom Ford never find out about it.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES