VOA标准英语2012--Lost Luggage Ends Up Here

Lost Luggage Ends Up Here

Millions of Americans return from long-distance trips by air, but their luggage doesn’t always come home with them.

Airline identification tags can come loose, and the bags go who-knows-where.

Amazingly, some people never pick up their luggage at airport baggage-claim carousels¹.

And passengers leave all kinds of things on planes. 

The airlines collect the items and, for 90 days, attempt to find their owners. If they have no luck, they are literally² left holding the bags of thousands of travelers.

They don’t keep them, since they’re not in the warehouse³ business. And by law, they cannot sell the bags, because the airlines might be tempted⁴ to deliberately⁵ misplace luggage.

So once insurance companies have paid for lost bags and their contents, and they no longer belong to passengers, a unique store in the little town of Scottsboro, Alabama, buys them - sight unseen.

Racks of clothes and shoes are available for sale at the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Alabama. 

The “Unclaimed Baggage Center,” is so popular that the building, which is set up like a department store, is the number-one tourist attraction in all of Alabama.

More than one million visitors stop in each year and take one of the store’s squeaky shopping carts on a hunt for treasures.

The Unclaimed Baggage Center displays one-of-a-kind items lost by individual travelers, plus whole racks of identical items found in freight shipments that for some reason never got delivered.

Each day, clerks bring out 7,000 new items, and veteran shoppers rush to paw over them. You can find everything from precious jewels to hockey sticks, best-selling novels, leather jackets, tape recorders, surfboards, even half-used tubes of toothpaste.

That’s right - used toothpaste for 50 cents or a dollar.

The store’s own laundry washes or dry cleans all the clothes found in luggage, then sells them. Need a wedding dress? There’s a selection of beautiful lost and unclaimed ones. 

The Unclaimed Baggage Center has found guns, illegal drugs - even a live rattlesnake - inside bags.

The store has a little museum where some of its most unusual acquisitions have been preserved. They include highland⁶ bagpipes⁷, a burial mask from an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb, and a medieval suit of armor.

Less than one-half of one percent of luggage checked on U.S. carriers is permanently⁸ lost and available to the store. Still, that’s a lot of toothpaste and wedding dresses that never made it home.

1 carousels   

n.喧闹的酒会；旋转木马( carousel的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Object carousel and data carousel are both carousels. 对象轮和数据轮都是轮播方式，但是两者存在区别。 来自互联网
• Build dizzy carousels, unbelievable roller-coasters, Ferris wheels, fear halls and other thrilling andand thirsty. 建造眩目的回旋木马，难以置信的云霄飞车，摩天轮，恐怖木屋和其他令人毛骨悚然的设备。 来自互联网

2 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

3 warehouse   

n.仓库；vt.存入仓库

参考例句：

• We freighted the goods to the warehouse by truck.我们用卡车把货物运到仓库。
• The manager wants to clear off the old stocks in the warehouse.经理想把仓库里积压的存货处理掉。

4 tempted   

v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词）

参考例句：

• I was sorely tempted to complain, but I didn't. 我极想发牢骚，但还是没开口。
• I was tempted by the dessert menu. 甜食菜单馋得我垂涎欲滴。

5 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

6 highland   

n.(pl.)高地，山地

参考例句：

• The highland game is part of Scotland's cultural heritage.苏格兰高地游戏是苏格兰文化遗产的一部分。
• The highland forests where few hunters venture have long been the bear's sanctuary.这片只有少数猎人涉险的高山森林，一直都是黑熊的避难所。

7 bagpipes   

n.风笛；风笛( bagpipe的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Yes, and I'm also learning to play the bagpipes. 是的，我也想学习吹风笛。 来自超越目标英语 第3册
• Mr. Vinegar took the bagpipes and the piper led the cow away. 于是醋溜先生拿过了风笛，风笛手牵走了奶牛。 来自互联网

8 permanently   

adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地

参考例句：

• The accident left him permanently scarred.那次事故给他留下了永久的伤疤。
• The ship is now permanently moored on the Thames in London.该船现在永久地停泊在伦敦泰晤士河边。