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Buying an Atlas

7/30/2016

2 Comments

 
Picture
​Buying an atlas expands your world. It teaches you new and unexpected things, too, about how the world changes and how quickly.
 
I like navigating the old way, using a map to find out where I’m going. It allows me to explore the big picture and figure things out on my own. It’s an awesome feeling.
 
Preparing to move, I recently passed on our ancient (2011) road atlas to our son Kirby, who got my dad’s car after he passed away. Lacking a cover, and with some missing and water-logged pages, I gave it to him solemnly, so he can have it to serve as back-up in his GPS electronic-fueled universe. I hope he is forced to use it at some point, and he is prepared, as I had him navigate for me many times on trips through its pages. He now accesses his smart phone to direct me when I get lost, but what the heck, I tried.
 
The 2011 version was in need of replacement anyway, as the 2017 version was ready with all those new streets under construction in the United States. The atlas keeps up, just not as quickly as going online or by using Google.
 
As I cleaned out the back of my car for the trip north, I pulled out battery chargers, a first-aid kid, reusable grocery bags, reading glasses, my 25 favorite CDs, my sports chair and cheering cone. My life as it existed. Underneath, I unearthed two books that contained hundreds of pages in the Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW) metro area – atlases that were dynamite and necessary 10 years ago, maybe even 5, to find out where you were headed in this massively morphing metropolis.
 
Now those two books are pretty much useless. Not even I would buy them, which says a lot. The company that prints them might not be out of business if enough older people exist who won’t use a form of electronic navigating, but I can’t imagine that market is large enough for them to continue publishing a paper version.

It was odd pulling these books out and dumping them in the recycling bin. The two copies I had were the second version I’d bought since moving to DFW in 2004. Roads are built so quickly here that the original ones were out-of-date within five years (probably even sooner if we want to look at it realistically), so you had to replace them.
Then, with the onslaught of the Internet, Google and GPS, whammo, they were obsolete. Something previously very necessary disappeared very quickly.
 
The books sat in the back of my car for several years. I could not remember the last time I opened them.  They made me nostalgic.  And they were probably only 7-years-old, maybe 8. Obsolescence ratchets up.
 
Most of our possessions hold long-term value in our lives, or at least we have some fondness for hanging onto them. Clothing should be useful until it wears out, but we often discard shirts, shoes and pants before then. Furniture we typically use until the stuffing pops out. Carpets stay on the floor until it is beat up and the color fades.  And so on.
 
But an atlas is a different animal. You would think it should last forever. It doesn’t. Technology displaced it.
 
Still, I’m going to use this new one. I will pore over it as I head through Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin, looking at rivers, alternative routes and state parks to explore in the future. A new world will emerge, with places to visit that I hadn’t considered. You never know where you’ll end up.

2 Comments
Chuck Stanley
8/1/2016 05:06:55 pm

Bet you treasured that Atlas on your bicycle trip across the West after college!

I truly am a fan of the Atlas and have the same issue of getting my millennium off-spring to use one.

Additional to the overload of geographical information an Atlas holds to its chest, my greatest intent to use it was to get off the Blue roads opting for the less traveled Red, Yellow and Green routes to slow down and see the real America. I was inspired to get off the main routes to experience rural America as John Steinbeck wrote about in "Travels With Charlie.", So I learned to opt for the "roads less traveled" every chance I get to slow down a bit and take in the greatness America beholds beyond tits expansive Interstate System.

Reply
Jim Luschen
8/15/2016 06:36:39 pm

An old road atlas may be next to useless, but really old atlases are very cool. I have one from 1896. It is fascinating to see the changes in 100+ years of "progress".

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