Remember the days – and it wasn’t too long ago – when getting somewhere new required a bit of courage?

Before a family trip, my father would stand beside our 1965 Rambler station wagon with one of his treasured road maps spread across the hood of the car. Sometimes it was folded neatly; more often it looked like a giant paper accordion that had already lost one too many battles against human hands. He kept several of them stuffed into the glove compartment — maps for New York City, Westchester, New Jersey, and the endless maze of parkways and expressways that crisscrossed the metropolitan area.

There were no GPS devices back then. No soothing electronic voice telling us to “turn right in 500 feet.” No colorful blue line reassuring us we were heading in the correct direction. My father had to figure out everything himself.

He would carefully trace the route with his finger, studying exits, estimating mileage, and calculating travel time with surprising confidence. “About an hour and fifteen minutes,” he might say, as though he were conducting a scientific experiment rather than making an educated guess. And somehow, most of the time, he was remarkably close.

Of course, getting lost was always a real possibility.

That was simply part of traveling in those days. If you missed an exit, there was no automatic recalculation. There was no smartphone in your pocket to rescue you. Sometimes........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)