I can’t stand maps and I hate asking for directions. Consequently, I often don’t get to where I want to go. When that happens, I just go back home. I know where that is.
My way is to simply drive around until I find where I’m looking for. Remarkably, it works out fine a large percentage of the time. If, for example, I’m looking for the downtown of a city, I just keep driving towards where the buildings get taller. Sooner or later, I wind up at city hall.
Once in a while, I decide to do things right and ask a local resident for help. After the help’s been rendered, without fail, I resolve never to do that again.
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Take last Thursday night, for example. I wanted to go to Bridgeport. I decided, for once, to take the easy way rather than drive around like an explorer searching for the New World. I stopped at a coffee shop, approached a group of people sitting at a counter, and asked for directions.
“When you leave here, turn right,” said a friendly middle-aged man. “Second light, turn right again. Follow that highway a few miles till you see a sign for Bridgeport Road. And there you are.”
“Thanks,” I said.
That was painless enough, I thought. Or was it?
“You’re sure you know how to get to the expressway?” said a second man, older, more of a take-charge type.
“Yes, I think I can …”
“Here, let me draw you a map,” he said. I didn’t want a map. Based on the simple explanation from Good Samaritan #1, I knew now exactly where I was heading.
Grabbing a pen and a napkin, Good Samaritan #2 started working on a sketch I’m sure will find its way into Rand-McNally’s next atlas of the area. Starting with a bird’s eye view of the coffee shop, he drew the parking lot, the street in front of it, the two traffic lights I’d go through and finally, the expressway.
There are 211,000 people in the cities next to Bridgeport. I chose a professional cartographer to ask for directions.
A few minutes into my geography lesson, the first napkin was full of lines, arrows, circles, squares and small print. And we’d only just got onto the expressway. There were still miles to go.
The first napkin was numbered Map #1 in the top left hand corner, and a second napkin was procured from the dispenser and labelled, Map #2. The expressway began to curve in gentle lines across the napkin, heading for the top right hand corner and Bridgeport. This map showed turnoffs I wasn’t to take, signs I was to ignore and lanes I was to bypass. Finally, there was a street plan of Bridgeport showing gas stations, hotels, convenience stores.
Satisfied with himself, Jacques Cartier handed me the two sections of my map and wished me luck.
“Sure you don’t want to come with me?” I joked.
His friends laughed.
I stepped out into the parking lot in relief. I just wanted to get going.
“Heading for Bridgeport?” I heard a voice shout from the driver’s window of a van.
“Ya, but …” I called back to a man, his wife and their boy who I remembered had been sitting at a table in the coffee shop while I was getting directions from Christopher Columbus.
“Just follow us!” the man cried out and headed his van for the street.
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I jumped in my car, raced out of the parking lot after the van and tried for the next 10 minutes to keep up to a high-flying Good Samaritan #3 who sped through the streets as if he was escorting me to the emergency room of a hospital. He must have been an angel in a previous life. If he kept this up, he’d be one again.
Why I followed the leader in and out, I’ll never know. I already knew where I was going. Finally, they took me to the outskirts of Bridgeport, pulled up beside my car, and wished me bon voyage.
On the return trip, back through the cities, I just kept driving till the buildings got smaller.
Soon I was in the country. On my way back home. Don’t need a map to get there.
That’s what makes it home.
©1988 Jim Hagarty
