 
 The mystery of where the lost sock in the laundry goes may be eternal but you can know where the lost luggage ends up.
 Alabama.
 509 West Willow Street, Scottsboro, Alabama, of all places.
 Travelers can take some small heart from the federal Department of Transportation’s now getting tough with the airlines over living up to the rules on paying for lost baggage. Imagine that happening two years ago, say. But even as the vast majority of bags that aren’t there at the carousel when your plane lands ultimately will return, some bags will get lost forever. It happens.
 (I’ve been lucky and only rarely have my bags gone astray, and when they did, they showed up in short order. The other day, though, I overheard a conversation in Budapest – more on that grand town next – where an American traveler was telling someone about how his bags vanished and he had nothing but the clothes he was wearing. Much worse, he noted that when he sat down to order dinner a waiter dumped a dish of chicken on him. So not only did he have only those clothes but he was attracting foxes.)
 Bags will get permanently lost for a hundred reasons. The tags get ripped off. The computer misreads things. There is nothing inside the bag to help the airline find the owner. But the bags do not fly on forever, like “Charley on the MTA†in the ancient song.
 No, many end up in Alabama.
 When all efforts to find the luggage have failed, the airlines are to pay the customer for the lost bag. When all efforts to find the owner have failed, most airlines sell the bags for a pittance to the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro. It’s an amazing place, and worth a sidetrip if you’re in the northeast Alabama area at all.
 The web is http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/
 Hundreds of thousands of people visit the Unclaimed Baggage Center – for bargains. Real bargains. I’ve been there and it’s for real.
 They get the bags from the airlines. They open them and see what’s inside. Because people often bring their nicest clothes when on a trip, they have some fine duds on their hands in Scottsboro. They have set up a gigantic dry cleaning operation and when the clothes are tidied up, they sell them. Simple as that.
 You can buy suits and shoes and hats and dresses and sweaters and belts and pretty much everything except underwear and old socks. More, people pack souvenirs and other valuables so you can buy cameras and dolls and books and a thousand other things.
 At great prices.
 There’s the rare story of a shopper discovering his own lost goods at the Unclaimed Baggage Center but mostly it’s a matter of sorting through someone else’s lost goods and seeing what you like. Business remains strong even as fewer people travel and people take fewer bags to save money as the airlines charge so much now.
 One little lesson on life that is there at the Center is this: They have, in the jewelry counter, several long velvet displays of wedding rings. For some reason, people take off their wedding rings, put it in the bag and have some explaining to do at home when the bag goes south. Now why would anyone do that? I wonder. I noticed that every single one of the rings was a man’s wedding ring.
 “Do you ever find women’s rings that were hidden away in the luggage?†I asked.
 “No. Not a one. It’s only the men.â€
 My, my.
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[...] keep your bag from ending up in Scottsboro, Alabama, it is a simple but smart thing to include an itinerary inside your luggage. Tags get torn [...]