Last week the Los Angeles Times published a story that caught my eye. It was about an elderly man who had passed away, and his home was placed on the market. When the realtor showed up to tour the property, he made an amazing discovery...the house was stuffed to the gills with maps. City maps. State maps. Regional maps. U.S. maps. Thomas Guides. World globes. Atlases. Road maps. You name the map, the recently departed had them. And he had saved them.
I read the article and felt a kindred spirit. I, too, have always loved maps. I wasn't as obsessive in collecting and holding onto them as this man was, but I used to pour over them growing up. Growing up as a Boomer, our family vacations were always based around the automobile. Proud members of AAA, my parents would prepare for each vacation by walking out of the local AAA office laden with maps and tour books and triptiks. I devoured them before the vacations, I memorized them on the road, Years later, we still had them.
To this day, I have three oversized Atlases of the world laying around the house, and a world globe that I've hung onto for more than 35 years now.
So, when this LA Times story caught my eye, it made me smile a bit...and think:
http://articles.latimes.com/...
And when I heard, a few days later, that Newsweek magazine will cease publishing a news-stand edition, and try to cling to life as a digital entity on the web, it made me think some more.
How much longer before paper maps, map books, and map reading as a basic skill go the way of churning your own butter? Is it now, or will it soon become, a useless skill? I guess it depends upon how you define utility, doesn't it?
Do you know the way to San Jose? And do you need to, if you have Garmin in your car? That, and other ponderings about the late, great fold out map below the, ummm, digital fold.
I've always had an inexplicable affinity for maps of just about any kind. They were, for me, a portal to distant lands, or a different lens through which to view the land I was surrounded by. Some people do the New York Times crossword puzzle while...ummm...on the pot. I leaf through the World Atlas. Or even the Rand McNally Road Atlas, if I'm pondering a trip. They are both in the same magazine rack next to the porcelain throne. I always find something new in a map that I've looked at even a hundred times.
I can't explain why I was drawn to maps, or describe the moment of zen that made me one with them, or put a date on it. I just grew into them on my own. My grandparents had a grand old globe in their living room, which used to fascinate me as a young child. When I was a bit older, I dearly wanted a globe, but my parents couldn't afford one like the one my grandparents had. They eventually did buy one, and though it was smaller, and a bit cheesier than the one I had hoped for, I still had fun with it. We also had a set of encyclopedias...so I would spin the globe and stop it with one finger, and look the location up that my finger had landed upon in the encyclopedia. That was my "home schooling."
I proved to be practical during a few of the early cross country road trips I recall with my family. We hail from Ohio, moved to California when I was 6, and made many a road trip back and forth during the summer months growing up. The earlist trips I remember were before Route 66 had been completely replaced by the Interstate Highway System. And there was a time when a cross country traveller had to traverse the worst maze in the U.S.A. Downtown St Louis. I remember it well, because it was when I realized I had a knack for reading maps.
For the hapless out of towner who had to navigate business route 66 through St Louis, it could be a white knuckle experience. You would come to an intersection, circa 1966, and find a telephone pole adorned with half a dozen State or U.S. route signs nailed to the pole, in various degrees of orientation, pointing off in a baffling variety of directions. Literally...it was mind boggling for a stranger. Heaven help you if you came to a five point intersection, where right or left was somewhat ambiguous. In times like this, my mother melted away into a useless blob. My Dad, given the fact that St Louis was, from our starting point, a good 2 hours away from where you turn in for the night, was the primary driver and had, by this time, a few bourbon and sodas under his belt.
St Louis taught me a few things as a youngster. From my Dad, who was driving, I greatly expanded my vocabulary of filthy expletive deletives. I learned more ways to use the eff word while driving through St Louis in the mid Sixties than in any other occasion of my life. I also learned to read a map. At the age of 12, and given my Mom's lack of direction, and my older sisters indolence, I took it upon myself to pour over the maps we had been given by AAA. When we came to one of those intersections, which I still remember as if it were yesterday, with 12 different signs nailed up to a post in various degrees of askance and ambivalent orientation...my Dad would swear, and curse the St Louis city fathers for being so frugal in their directions. (All the while shaking his empty glass, except for some melted ice cubes, and gesturing for a refill)
I learned to pour over the map. The city map, in this case. "Turn right here", I would say...go another 5 blocks until you come to such and such street, and then turn left. And so it went...and I don't mean to brag, but I was the only one in the car who knew where the fuck we were, and how the fuck to get out of there. It was an empowering experience, strangely.
It was always sort of a second nature thing for me, but it was also always a love for the geometry, the linearity, the indelible factuality of what a map depicts.
One of the more esoteric classes I took in college was an introductory surveying class. I learned how to use surveying instruments, read elevations with respect to a set point, and make cursory topographical maps. Topo maps are among my favorites. I own an old USGS topo map of the county I was born in, and the detail is so minute that it even shows structures such as barns in the rural areas. Now that's a good map.
There are many people, these days...and it started some time ago, I'm afraid...who simply never learned to read maps, let alone appreciate them. For many years, starting in the mid 80's, I worked in Los Angeles as a courier for DHL. You needed to know how to read a map, especially in my case, since I was a fill in driver who never did the same route twice in a week. I learned to drive while reading a Thomas Guide and talking on a radio and writing down newly called in stops all at the same time.
Years later, as a hiring manager, I would interview applicants who were 15 years younger than me at least. Often times I would hand them a Thomas Guide map and say to them...show me where the XXXX block of Robertson Blvd is. Or, if I was in a bad mood, I would pick a street that went through many different suburbs, and changed numbering systems from one suburb to another (but if you know how to read a map, and a Thomas Guide, this isn't that big of a challenge) Many failed.
During the training process, I can't tell you how many people I came across who couldn't read a map. Some would look at a map in their lap which was oriented in a way so that north was pointing to their stomach, while they were driving south...and they would be utterly confused because the streets they came upon didn't match the streets on the map. Others were completely unaware of simple geographic directional landmarks. The San Gabriel Mountains, for example, are to the north of Los Angeles...so if they are in front of you, you're heading north. If they're to your left, you're heading east. Simple shit like that.
I'm not a Luddite, nor an Antiquarian...but I have to believe that map reading is a basic skill that is worth knowing, and that real maps are worth having around. Mapquest is useful...I won't deny it. I use it. But it's not really a map. And Garmin is just obnoxious. I'll tell you what...you and I start in Atlantic City, me with only a map and you only with Garmin, and let's both drive to Santa Barbara and see who gets there first.
I'll leave the light on for you.