Road maps, filling stations, and the good old days

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Freddy_the_Pig

Ah, the golden age of automobile travel.

Did someone say the golden age of automobile travel?

Forgive me, but I simply must.

American Motels

And also:

Coffee And Chrome

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@TommyTutone

Living in Maine, before we’d travel to Disney, or Pittsburgh, or wherever, my mother would get us a Trip-Tik from AAA. It was a series of maps with your route highlighted and all put in a flip over spiral bound notebook. It was cool setting off knowing you had 17 pages to get through, and getting to flip each page as you got closer to your destination.

Ooh, we had one of those once when I was a kid. My Dad was a do-it-yourselfer who would plan his own routes, but one time he grudgingly accepted a AAA book from a friend who had been to Florida before us.

I got to keep it in the back seat. Oh my God. I was 7 years old, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I believed it had been gifted from a superior civilization whose coolness far exceeded our own. I thought my Dad’s friends must be Very Important People, to be able to flaunt such coolness. My own family seemed lame by comparison.

[Baker]

@Zeldar

I have thrown away boxes of old folding road maps that I got for free at filling stations since back in the 50’s. Every gas station had its own version and publisher of the states and regions of the country near the state where the station was located and you could grab as many as you wanted.

Ack! My father collects old maps like that, from the 50’s and before, if he can find them.

Weeps bitterly.

[Mdcastle]

I have a several hundred maps, but I think my hobby is coming to an end with respect to modern maps. I try to replace them every 15 years, but it seems Rand McNally maps of even large cities are going out of print en masse.