Love Affair with Maps

Carolyn J. Rose

Recently my neighbors helped me sell my car—a process that, thanks to technology, took about 10 minutes. Surprised by how quickly we had a buyer on the way, I scurried around, cleaning out the glove box and trunk. They pitched in to help and, as they used to say about 1950s sitcoms, hilarity ensued.

First, they gawked and guffawed over the manila file folder that contained documents for every time the car was serviced. Then they chuckled and nudged each other at the sight of the little notebook where I’d recorded each fill-up (complete with cost, mileage since the last time I hit a gas station, and total mileage) since the date of purchase.

Refusing to be embarrassed by their reaction to my level of obsessive organization, I moved on to the door pockets and a collection of maps. Oregon. Washington. California. Assorted cities in each state.

“Maps!” my neighbors exclaimed, their voices carrying a mix of disbelief, amazement, and pity. “Who still uses maps?”

The short answer is, “I do.”

I love the smell of a new map. I love the feel of a map. I love the crisp creases. I love unfolding it to get the big picture of where I’m going. I love tracing the route ahead and the miles behind. I even love refolding (correctly, of course) when we’ve rolled off one map and on to the next one.

I like to see more than a screen with the route ahead. I like the color shadings, the blue of water, the green of forest, the red and gray of roads, the many little markers for airports and highways and parks and campgrounds. I like to check out the names of cities and towns and wonder how they came to be.

Sure, maps have their drawbacks. When they get old, they fray in the creases. And then they often rip. An ink blot or coffee spill can wipe out key landmarks. Sometimes I have to add up incremental mileage postings to get the total for a long journey. They don’t update automatically when roads are closed or built. They can’t tell me where I am if I can’t find a key landmark or signpost.

But I can forgive all that because of their beautiful complexity. And because they’re works of art.

Someday I may get a GPS, but no way will I ever throw away my maps.

Gone But Never Forgotten.

          

         

Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours--Yogi Berra

         None of us is immune to cancer. I mean this, not just in the obvious sense that this ugly disease could strike anyone at any moment, but from the perspective that we’ve all been touched by it.

          For many years, my awareness of cancer was somewhat abstract: a co-worker’s mother who fought off a medical death sentence for many years beyond the original prognosis; the eerie vision of Yul Brynner, an actor of vast talent and energy reminding us from beyond the grave; “Now that I’m gone, I tell you, don’t smoke”; my wife’s cousin succumbing to breast cancer.

All tragic, of course, but until I was in my forties, I hadn’t lost a close friend or family member to a malignancy.

          In 1996, Rick Olsen, one of my best friends from college, asked if he and his wife could stay with us while he was being treated for skin cancer at the veterans’ hospital in Portland. He did, and I saw first-hand the physical and emotional toll the disease took on this bright, athletic and relentlessly optimistic man and his wife. After several years of struggle and, unfortunately, a succession of scams that bled them financially while offering false hope, he passed away in Brookings, Oregon, the town where he grew up.

To this day, I have to fight off the urge to phone him and hear his unconventional greeting when picking up. “Hark,” he would always say.  You have to admit “hark” adds a whole new dimension to “hello”. It’s impossible to think of Rick and not smile. Losing him hammered in the final nail on the coffin of my own innocence.

          Dennis, a friend I made in the mid-70’s when our wives worked together, succumbed to colon cancer in the fall of 2002. I jokingly referred to him and his wife Pam as “the last of the old-time street hippies,” but that really didn’t do either of them justice. Dennis was a successful businessman, an inventor, and smart as hell. But he lived the best of the 60’s ideals: love for your fellow man, generosity, and love of loud and raucous San Francisco rock and roll. When I think of him, I can still hear Janis moaning “Down On Me.” I

          I had occasion to walk the beach at Florence with him just before he died and although I hadn’t touched marijuana in more than ten years, I broke my cannabis fast that day. How could I not? It was an essential ritual for us. His death closed yet another chapter in my life. Like it or not, I am now the establishment. Or perhaps I’m a plain-clothes hippie now.

          Lisa Breeden was my newswoman and morning show sidekick for four-plus years at KRKE radio in Albuquerque. Gallons of mega-toxic coffee, riffing on the news of the day, cross-zinging each other on a daily basis, and being called on the boss’ carpet for our on-air transgressions cemented a successful radio partnership and a life-long friendship. Our on-air synergy led to “Mike and Lisa” merging into one word in the minds of our listeners. She was smart, irrepressible and insanely generous. She loved Christmas and showered gifts on her friends and family, even when times were tight for her.

          After attending Left Coast Crime in Santa Fe a number of years before she passed, I saw Lisa for the last time. We ate carne adovada, giggled about our encroaching age, and waxed nostalgic about the old days. She seemed fine, upbeat and energetic. A friend of ours e-mailed us the day after she died early in December. Lung cancer. Literally, only days passed between diagnosis and her succumbing to the disease.

          I have air-checks from that era, the two of us goofing on whoever or whatever blipped on our radar. One day, when the grief has subsided, perhaps I’ll listen to them and drift back to that smoky studio in Albuquerque. Then I’ll crank up a Janis Joplin tune and think of Dennis. And, if someone should call when I’m lost in my reverie, I’ll answer the phone Rick-fashion. “Hark,” I’ll say. Hark, indeed.

Crank Old Guys Club

This meeting of the cranky old guys club is now called to order. (Sound of gavel pounding)

It’s true. Stuff that I would have shrugged off a mere 5 (or possibly 10) years ago now annoys the s*** out of me. 

Examples? Ooooooh, have I got examples.

•    Sequels to movies that were turkeys in the first place. Exhibit A—The Thomas Crown Affair. The original was a ho-hum thriller with the always phlegmatic Steve McQueen and the monotone mumbler Ali McGraw. The remake starred the sleek and emotionless Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, who makes even Ali look animated.

• Speaking of movies, why do we have to sit through a dozen trailers, seven commercials and a 20 minute whoring of television shows to get to the featured movie? It’s enough to put a guy off his popcorn.

• High tech golf gadgets. Here’s a typical conversation on the golf course with me and Mr. GPS.

Mr. GPS: How far do you think it is from here to the hole? 

Me:(Eyeballing 150 yard post and flagstick) Maybe 165 yards.

 Mr. GPS:  Wrong! It’s 167.4587 yards.

 Me:  Great! I wouldn’t want to make a big mistake and swing my 165 yard club and come up  2.4587 yards short.      

                           

The average weekend golfer is not even sure he will hit the ball, let alone know exactly how far he’s going to hit it. I vote to restrict GPS usage to those who want to get hopelessly lost in a strange city when a road map could have told them where to go.

• People who constantly take big risks by zooming from lane to lane in gridlocked traffic. Got news for you, pal. When we finally make it to the Interstate Bridge, you’re going to be right beside me again. With some luck you'll get to your destination 2.4587 seconds earlier than if you'd just cooled your jets and waited.

• Freeway or major highway exits that don’t offer an immediate way back on to aforementioned highway or freeway. Having zoned out on my way to take a friend to the airport recently, I slid off one exit too soon and wandered through an east Vancouver neighborhood for 20 minutes trying to get back to the big asphalt. What they need is a GPS with a voice that shrieks “You’re taking the wrong exit, numbskull.”

• Electronic music. I’m sorry, but it takes no talent to program a computer to repeat the same series of synthesized drum rhythms from now until the end of time. One of our water aerobics instructors favors this insult to music lovers during her deep water workouts and I have to fight the urge to tear off my flotation device, sink to the bottom of the pool and stay there.

• Food manufacturers who try to jack their profit margins by whittling down package sizes. Did you know ice cream no longer comes in a half gallon? Instead, you’re buying 1.75 quart containers. Note to the folks at the Tillamook creamery. Charge me an extra 25 cents and put the ice cream in half gallons like God intended them to be.

There’s more but I’ll save it for the next meeting. Hopefully I can include some of your faves.

Walden – 2016 Style

Carolyn J. Rose

 

Recently yet another acquaintance criticized me for not having my cellphone turned on all the time, and for having no idea how to send a text or a tweet. Since the statement was about her, not me, I didn’t respond. But, believe me, I was tempted to point out that the issue was her convenience, not mine.

The fact is, I don’t want to be constantly connected. I enjoy the hours spent without a phone ringing—not matter how cute the ringtone may be. I enjoy silence or, if the window is open, the sounds of the birds, the breeze, and my neighbors as they go about their days.

My neighborhood is a long way from Walden Pond, and yet I feel a kinship with Henry David Thoreau. Although he lived alone at the pond for two years, he was only a mile from his nearest neighbor. He had visitors. He walked to town. He joined his family for an occasional dinner. But, by and large, he stripped his life down to what he felt was necessary.

So, when I consider the criticism of those tethered to their technology, I keep Thoreau in mind. Would the man who said “inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract us from serious things” have owned a cell phone? Would the man who said “men have become tools of their tools” have kept his cellphone on 24/7? Would the man who said “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes” buy a fancy case for his phone?

I’m pretty sure the answer to each of those questions is “No.”

So, I’m with Henry D. I’m keeping pace to a different drum. Think of my low-tech corner of the world as a kind of Walden, a place of refuge from a plugged-in, dialed-in, wired world, a place where I can be in touch only when I want to.