Time Capsule 21: paper road maps

These time capsules contain everyday items no longer in use.

You find them in our mental museum exhibits, or garage sales, or, if you've forgot, you can't find them at all.

Paper road maps are Exhibit #21. They were once essential, and now they are nostalgic ephemera of long-ago trips.

Last year, Adèle and I drove around Florida in a rental car. We hadn't been in that lovely winter sunshine since 1972. Back then, we were driving a '65 VW bus rigged out as a camper, with money for gas and food, but not motel rooms.

Fifty years later, the EV had that big GPS screen tracking us on all the roads. Its female voice firmly prompted every turn on the way to the next stop.

Still, even as we were grateful for the newfangled tech guiding us on our way, we couldn't help missing some things about the old trips. The passenger's lap had an open road map on it, and the driver would be asking, "How far to Fort Myers?" or "What if we took Florida 41 instead of I-75?" The passenger was navigator.

So we veered in front of a pickup flying a Stars and Bars flag and took off on the first exit with a big gas station sign visible. "Let's get a map!"

It never occured to us geriatrics that we needed to specify a paper map.

Inside the convenience store of the station, the young immigrant at the cash register by the jerkey treats and 5-Hour Energy Shots didn't understand Adèle's question, "Do you have a Florida road map?"

Perhaps it was that he wasn't a native speaker of English. But no, she might as well have been asking for an Allman Brothers cassette tape. At least a paper map wouldn't have required a long-gone player!

Then his eyes brightened in comprehension, and he said, "Oh, papah map? Soddie. No. Not here."

Not realizing that paper road maps had gone the way of the Conestoga wagon, we took turns going into gas stations and then state highway tourist offices along the way to find a damn map for sale. No luck. The concierges at the hotels didn't have maps either, but they'd be happy to print up 8-1/2 by 11 inches of a Google one if we'd like.

We ended up making the rest of the otherwise pleasant trip with the car's GPS display as our road map. It was trustworthy, and we got everywhere we intended.

Still... without the road map to study and all the alternate routes imagined, something valuable in the old road trip experience had been lost.

One night, after we gave up on finding a road map, Adèle and I had a conversation over a bottle of wine (or was it two?) about Piranesi's etchings of Rome, about living to be 70 years old among all the ruins, the disappearance of old stuff, and the increasingly rapid pace of innovations in our lives.

While far from Luddites and appreciating the service GPS systems offer us these days, we are nostalgic for the paper maps we used to keep in the glove compartments of our cars.

But then, we also remember Adèle's mom, Betty, who always had a pair of Hermès calfskin gloves rather than maps in that little compartment in front of the passenger seat.

What's in the anachronistically called 'glove compartment' of our car now, other than a car manual (soon to be replaced by a digital one), auto registration, and proof of insurance?

What's permanent? —Change.

Time Capsule #20                                                                                                                    Back to Beginning