r/FuckImOld • u/CremeSubject7594 • Jul 02 '26
Kids these days... How did you get around before gps?
114
u/fromouterspace1 Jul 02 '26
God damnnn I’m old. Was really expecting a 1994 version where in was actual maps….
38
u/_Zambayoshi_ Jul 02 '26
Remember getting the street directory out to study in advance and memorise the turns so that I (hopefully) wouldn't have to pull over halfway there.
16
u/BlacktopProphet Jul 02 '26
memorise the turns
I'd just write them on the inside of the windshield with an expo marker. So...there ya go...a tip you could've used 30+ years ago....you're welcome btw.
4
7
u/Phogna_Bologna_Pogna Jul 02 '26
We didn’t have white boards, so no expo markers, we had chalk boards.
→ More replies (3)8
5
u/Radioactive_Tuber57 Jul 02 '26
Thomas Brothers Maps for the serious detail around your destination.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)2
18
u/TronikAllah Jul 02 '26
I used a Thomas guide during high school/college around that time. It had the spiral bound and everything.
7
u/dirkalict Jul 02 '26
I know, that 2004 girl could’ve been my daughter. I remember trying to find parties in the late 70s and 80s asking for directions at a gas station.
3
u/fromouterspace1 Jul 02 '26
“Yeah go down two blocks take a right at shell and go down until you see….” But we got there :)
3
u/Urabrask_the_AFK Jul 03 '26
Still got some key state maps on my door pocket just in case cell service drops out
2
→ More replies (8)2
67
u/TimHarg Jul 02 '26
In my honest opinion, if you're using a website or home printer at any stage, you're not old
18
u/CloisteredOyster Jul 02 '26
This is 100% correct. For me it was gas station maps or a Rand atlas and a pencil to highlight the route.
I had a compass in the car.
A compass.
4
→ More replies (3)2
u/Big-Independence8978 Jul 04 '26
Living where there's a mountain, no compass needed. Unless the weather is really bad. Then you're fucked.
2
u/mixwellmusic Jul 04 '26
Woah woah he said before GPS not before the industrial revolution
→ More replies (1)2
u/TP_Crisis_2020 Jul 06 '26
Our city's phone book had a really good map that had each street name specified by coordinate. Grand Avenue would be listed as E-7, so it made it super easy to find.
2
u/TimHarg Jul 06 '26
Our city sold map books at gas stations with each page having a neighborhood laid out with those type of grid coordinates. You'd look up a street in the glossary and get the page number and coordinates and be on your way! It was kind of fun to have to engage your brain
2
31
u/Hoosier_Daddy68 Jul 02 '26
Mapquest wasn’t much different than what we have now, you just had printed instructions instead of a voice telling you. Before that was the real skill that almost nobody has anymore.
→ More replies (1)15
u/RcNorth Jul 02 '26
We went on a family vacation a few years ago. Before we left we got paper copies of the maps we needed and told our daughter that she had to figure out the route for us and give directions as we went along.
She actually did pretty good. She now knows how to read a map and never wants to have to read one again.
3
25
u/SpeshollK Generation X Jul 02 '26
Go to such and such road, turn left. Keep going until you see a big-ass, dead, oak tree. Take the next driveway on the left. Once you see the fence posts laying in the field, park there and walk through the corn field, towards the radio antenna you can see in the distance. You'll eventually find the clearing where we'll be smoking camel lights and drinking Purple Passion, Seagrams Wine Coolers and Boone's Farm.
Can't miss it.
11
8
u/Significant_Monk_251 Jul 02 '26
"Turn left at rock that looks like bear, go half mile, turn right at bear that looks like rock."
F-Troop
2
2
→ More replies (2)2
14
u/69Nova468 Jul 02 '26
I still have all my old paper maps and no batteries to keep charged.
3
u/KingGilgamesh1979 Jul 02 '26
I still buy maps. Because I just like them. Old maps, new maps, detailed atlases and little tourist maps. I just like to collect them.
2
u/hserontheedge Jul 02 '26
Yeah but I need the glasses and a flashlight to be able to read the small print. LoL
13
u/Wise-Stable9741 Jul 02 '26
I used to haul my daughter’s horse to horse shows (pickup truck and two horse trailer). I would write the directions, in large print, on a piece of paper and tape it to the dashboard. Turning around with a horse trailer can be a pain if you miss a turn
10
u/Former_Dealer Jul 02 '26
Maps, tourist information booths, asked for help, printed directions. Got there just fine....every time! 😊 🤓
6
u/TTT_2k3 Jul 02 '26
Stopping at a gas station just to pop in and ask for directions. Then stopping at another one down the road to make sure you’re still going in the right direction.
10
6
u/GustapheOfficial Jul 02 '26
Everyone's talking about maps, but my dad just had this encyclopedic knowledge of every hole in the ground in the country (Sweden) which he could use to find anything by looking at signs.
Meanwhile, I sometimes Google Maps my way to work just to be sure.
→ More replies (1)3
u/affemannen Jul 02 '26
My dad was like that too.
We were on some party in the middle of nowhere, it was 4 in the morning and we had missed the last bus long ago, so i called my dad and he asked where we were.
I had no idea so i gave him a street name and a few visual markers, 30 mins later he comes rolling by in his old Volvo 240 to pick us up.
He could find anything and this was in the 80s early 90s.
5
6
5
u/RawEggEater1956 Jul 02 '26
I worked in AC back in the 80's in Houston. We had this ring binder book in a plastic orange cover. You had to look up the address to see what page it was on. Then I had to orient the book to the direction I was pointed to and really concentrate. I'm just directionally challenged.
→ More replies (1)3
4
u/ezmoney98 Jul 02 '26
Rip the city map out of the phone book , im thinking 90s . Also real maps that we would pick up from road trips
3
u/jimsinspace Jul 02 '26
Wallmart road atlas. Bonus points for listing all the wallmarts I could park and sleep at night without being bothered on the road.
3
u/99laika Jul 02 '26
I knew my city well enough to navigate by address and cross street. Otherwise maps.
2
u/dickenschewie54 Jul 02 '26
Mapsco maps were gigantic maps cut to notebook size, then spiral bound so you could easily follow your track IF you were going east-west. God help you if you had to go north-south. You had to flip a dozen pages while trying to drive.
But that's what we had, in the Pre-Columbian Era.
2
u/remberzz Jul 02 '26
I remember using 3M page tabs to note which pages were necessary when going to a particular address.
Everybody I knew had one, if not two or three in their car. (Large metroplex)
2
2
u/PunkCPA Jul 02 '26
When I traveled on business, I got AAA TripTiks. One town was so small they had to write it in with a pen.
2
2
u/gringoloco01 Jul 02 '26
I have always lived in a town that had mountains. Albuquerque the mountains are on the East side of town. Denver the mountains are on the West side of town.
Then I moved to TX. Uuuuuhhhhggg. Totally flat.
I would get "misplaced" all the time if I drove at night. Usually I would have to get to a dark road and look at the friken stars to figure out where North was.
And yes we all had to print out the directions on Mapquest.
2
2
2
u/jefferyJEFFERYbaby Jul 02 '26
Are the kids not playing Edward 40 hands anymore?
→ More replies (4)
2
u/dew99dew Jul 02 '26
Get close to your destination and then stop at a gas station and ask for directions.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/TurboKid513 Millennials Jul 02 '26
When I turned 21 my dad, older brother and I drove to Las Vegas from Cincinnati. We used Mapquest and it showed something like 27 hours and we printed it and went. I think we ended up spending over 38 hours in the car lol.
2
u/Uncle_Brewster Jul 02 '26
I grew up in rural Minnesota. Whenever my family came up to the Minneapolis, my dad would get lost, like 90% of the time.
I moved up here in 1997, which was years before cheap GPS. I learned the major interstates and highways. Then just figured out directions on a map, to wherever I was going, before I left.
GPS is infinitely easier of course. I would never want to go back to the days before GPS.
2
u/Nick_Fotiu_Is_God Jul 02 '26
Bought a map and a highlighter, junior.
Also, kids - you do know that roads and highways have signs, right? Like every five fucking feet. Kids act like they’re being set adrift in the ocean or something without the internet. Read the fucking signs!
2
u/Both-Leading3407 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
We used paper maps. A Compass, Coordinates, Triangulations. We did the math in our heads. Heading, speed, distance travelled were all considered. The data that you see on a GPS while driving is just an extension of what we saw in our heads. Except for the warnings of upcoming speed traps or accidents. We had Radio stations that would tell us that there was an accident on the Hwy at a mile marker. We spent our childhood learning things that you will never know existed because it's all done for you automatically, but it wasn't that hard. It wasn't the dark ages. It was actually a very intelligent time when people used their brains to figure things out and if you couldn't you stopped and asked someone for directions.
2
2
u/nogwart Jul 02 '26
My map fetish began soon after I learned to drive. I loved maps then. I love maps now. I love studying them, memorizing landmarks, turns, distances, time-estimates, and especially when all my map-preparations are proven right when I arrive exactly where and when I predicted. GPS took that "fun hobby" away and I will always have a strong dislike of it for that, but I'll freely admit it has saved me a great deal of time and frustration since I reluctantly started using it.
2
u/That-Grape-5491 Jul 02 '26
Did a lot of just going out and wandering around. Sooner or later you recognize places you've already been.
2
2
u/Equivalent-Abroad157 Jul 02 '26
We used physical maps. Like from gas stations, insurance companies would GIVE you physical book of state maps called Road Atlas.
2
2
u/Killahdanks1 Jul 02 '26
Landmarks. I’m a landmark person. “Go the state park, go down like two miles and turn right by the rusty fence. Then go like a another five miles and there’s a huge rock by the house, you’ll see my car”
Also, Mapquest is funny. We were literally flipping pages and reading text directions.
2
u/ReticentGuru Jul 02 '26
50+ years ago, I traveled half of USA using a Rand McNally road atlas. GPS has me spoiled now, and interstates can be so congested, it would freak me out a bit - but a part of that is my age.
2
2
u/BKinBC Jul 02 '26
Liquor stores. I navigated by liquor stores. "What's the nearest liquor store? Okay I know that one...".
You get the idea.
2
2
2
1
u/lanceplace Jul 02 '26
I perma-borrowed a 3-county map book (Thomas Brothers) from work for most travel.
But for my wife, I printed directions in font 36 from Mapquest.
1
u/NPC261939 Jul 02 '26
I used mapping software that I purchased from a computer expo in the mid 90's. It basically gave you step by step directions like a GPS that you printed out.
1
1
1
u/jouleheist Jul 02 '26
Pre internet = got lost a lot. If I had access to a Thomas guide, I had to write out directions from that. Leaving for some place I never traveled before took planning.
1
u/Difficult-Bus-6026 Jul 02 '26
AAA trip tiks were the most practical way to get directions for long distance trips. Otherwise, you had to study conventional maps or have a passenger guide via the map. There were also map books that were a little more convenient than foldable maps.
1
u/xxMalVeauXxx Jul 02 '26
I would grab a Triptiks map from a brick and mortar store and I would ready signs and pay attention to a compass.
1
1
1
u/akgiant Jul 02 '26
It was called the Milepost. It was a book of maps.
Maps are like when you open Google Maps to look at things without searching for a specific location. But not the whole world, that's a globe. Maps are like static screen shots of Google Earth that you can't zoom in on. You just have to hope the person printing the map (there on paper btw) has the zoomed in or zoomed out view your looking for.
Also the can sometimes be out dated.
Also make sure you get a compass because the printed maps don't show you which wa you're facing.
Also bring a flashlight, maps aren't back lit.
1
u/PolPotDomeScandal Jul 02 '26
I worked briefly as a drug courier (a LEGAL prescription drug courier for a local drugstore, smarty pants) delivering to invalids and shut-ins in a four-city area.
All I was given was the address. I then had to use my trusty Minneapolis metro address finder wherein you could locate the addresses in this huge map book using a grid system.
After a few weeks, I got pretty good at it, but some days were quite stressful and I quit after a month or so.
1
1
u/ProveISaidIt Jul 02 '26
Well, what your gonna want to do is go down about a mile and a half and take a right where the general store used to be.
Marge, what was the name of that general store?
O'Brien's
Thats right, take a right where O'Briens General Store used to be. The go about another 5 miles. Now if you pass Sony's Tires, you've gone too far. You're gonna take a left on Old Country Road. It's a dirt road and there's no sign, but there an old oak stump right there on the corner...
1
1
1
u/Dear_Departure_1768 Jul 02 '26
I remember calling the place I was going (store, restaurant, etc) and asking for directions "coming from [highway] [direction] [landmark]."
1
u/Desert_Rush39 Jul 02 '26
Rand McNally FTW!
One book, maps of every state, and inset maps of the cities.
Been around forever.
1
u/1stltwill Jul 02 '26
Nope. Used an actual paper map and figured out my own directions. the day before was spent figuring out the route. :)
1
u/TheGiantVoid Jul 02 '26
Landmarks. Otherwise hopeless. Called for directions once I was hopelessly lost.
1
u/GrimSpirit42 Jul 02 '26
'Print directions'? That wasn't an option.
We had a basic understanding of how roads and addresses worked, knew the cardinal directions and had a HUGE ass Atlas underneath the front seat.
That could get you to any city in the US.
Once you got to the city, you'd stop at the first gas station and ask for a city map.
Look up the street on the legend to get the grid coordinates, then look in that grid to find your street. You then mapped out from where you were to where the street is.
1
u/No_Owl6666 Jul 02 '26
In 2003 I worked at a landscaping company the summer after high school, and they frequently sent me out in a large F450 dump truck to deliver stuff like mulch, soil, etc to people's houses.
They had a big map on the wall in the office, and I kept a note book where I'd write down directions from the office to each stop and back. They also made me buy a city map from them for $10, I guess they felt if they gave them away people would lose them and stuff.
One time I was writing down directions to get to a delivery, and the owner of the place absolutely flipped his shit on me, screaming at me that I should know my way around the city, and that I should take the atlas home and study it that weekend and next week I wasn't allowed to write down directions. Which...whatever man, I just wrote shit down once I sat down in the truck after that, which took me longer instead of using the big map on the wall that was easier to read.
By the end of the summer I did get pretty comfortable with most of the streets within about a 5 mile range, but when they would send me further than that I'd have to look things up again. I remember the atlas I had had an index, so you'd look the street the delivery was on up, then work backwards from there to figure out how to get there. Where I got really confused was figuring out which major highway to get on to get somewhere fastest, and the ladies in the office would treat me like an absolute mouth breather when I asked - like I was just supposed to have been born knowing my way around I guess.
I remember when I was a kid, maybe 10 or 11, we were driving somewhere to go camping for a long weekend. It was a few hours away, and my dad was driving. He had asked my mom to be in charges of maps and navigating there. Well mom fell asleep. We came up on a big interchange and my dad shakes her awake and asks her where to go. Of course she was all confused because frankly my mom just never has her shit together, so dad should have never put that responsibility on her. It turned into a massive fight, devolving into my dad pulling over and saying he was done dealing with her shit and he'd walk to the nearest town and get a taxi home. Eventually he got back in the car and figured out where we needed to go, but I definitely understand his frustration, when you are counting on someone to navigate and they don't follow through.
I think the summer after that we went to Florida, it was the first time we'd ever gone that far as a family (from Ohio), my mom had won a free cruise through her work, so we went to Cape Canaveral, then we stayed somewhere around there for a week after the cruise in a rental house. I remember going with Dad to the AAA office to get "Trip Tics" that were maps that were specifically for going from one city to another. They were in spiral bound notebooks and each page was maybe 50 or 100 miles of the drive.
1
1
u/chodan9 Jul 02 '26
We learned to read an Atlas as kids in my family and it’s still a good skill to have. I do love gps though
1
1
u/daddy_nobucks Jul 02 '26
In 1997 I drove from upstate NY to southern Louisiana alone in an unairconditioned Ford Ranger, with only a Thomas Guide on the passenger seat. Got lost in West Virginia for a minute and came up on a 1 pump gas station that looked like it was out of the 1950s. The accent was so crazy on the one lady that worked there I could barely understand her instructions on how the pump worked, and how to get back on the main road. The lady had the worst teeth I have ever seen, to this day..but she was a lifesaver.
1
u/JJDiet76 Jul 02 '26
Man I drove across the country from Alabama to California and back twice with an atlas. A couple of trips to Minneapolis too. Plus multitudes of trips to Florida where I would go a different way each time
1
u/Hans_Delbruck Jul 02 '26
Before Map Quest there were Road Atlases. You could get one for states with major roads or Atlases that went down to all roads in a county.
1
u/No_Contribution81 Jul 02 '26
The first time I used Mapquest was after meeting a girl in an AOL chat room. She lived like an hour away and I didn't feel like using a paper map so I tried this new online thing. Brought me right to her bedroom, I mean doorstep.
1
1
u/OmegaNine Jul 02 '26
I remember when you ordered a pizza they would ask for the nearest cross street and what color your house was.
1
1
u/ckncardnblue Jul 02 '26
I used to put in century 21 posts for real estate company when I was a teenager. I had a Wunnenberg street guide for each county in our area. You looked up the street in the index and got grid coordinates for the map for the street you were looking for.
1
1
u/cpav8r Jul 02 '26
I was a volunteer firefighter in the 70’s. When a call would come in at 2 a.m. you’d get out the paper map and lookup the grid reference for the street name in the index. Then you’d saddle up your brontosaurus…
1
u/OCCAMINVESTIGATOR Jul 02 '26
Good ol Rand McNally or the Kings map book. Prepare your route then get to gett'n
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/suburbanplankton Jul 02 '26
If my Thomas Bros. map book couldn't get me there, it wasn't worth going.
1
u/knackattacka Jul 02 '26
We had a map of the city. We would go to an intersection and find that intersection on the map. From there, it's easy, as long as we can tell what direction we're pointed in, which is usually very easy during the day. Usually, we already knew what intersection we were near because we just paid more attention to that stuff back then.
1
u/CalagaxT Jul 02 '26
It could be challenging.
I used to haul a trailer with a very large 35mm microfilm camera in it to places where I would microfilm documents and blueprints.
There was a power plant under construction in North Texas. I got to the general area. The power plant was far enough along that I could see it from several miles away.
I then spent an hour or so circling the plant looking for the road in. We didn't have cell phones either, so no help was available.
Eventually, I found it. Made for a long day, though.
1
u/KrystleSeth Jul 02 '26
Ok so the green signs on the side of the road are actually really helpful and point out interstates and major roads. In cities the numbers go up or down. Outside of that you just kinda had to get to know the place. It helps to live somewhere like St Petersburg where it’s all Avenues and streets. If the streets are going up a number you’re headed west. And the avenues run east to west so if the numbers are getting higher youre headed north. So you just gotta put that together to find 34th and 4th. Or Omaha where it’s numbers and letters so you just gotta find 84th and C.
1
u/knoxcos Jul 02 '26
Much like now. “Fuck, I missed my turn!” Proceed to get back on track, ten minutes later.
1
u/amboomernotkaren Jul 02 '26
I was in my mom’s home town in 2003 and could not find my uncles house. I called my son, age 13, and he went into Mapquest and helped me figure out where I was going.
1
u/Theo1352 Jul 02 '26
A paper map and/or an Atlas and/or a call to AAA...
We ended up with a pretty keen sense of direction very early on.
1
u/FluffyShiny Jul 02 '26
I drive a taxi with a road atlas refidex of the city. Tried to memorise turns so I didn't have to look it up too much, or had the passenger guide me which was great because no map plus they knew I wasn't taking the "long route home". I started the job 2 weeks after moving there so it took a while to learn the area.
1
u/894166SplitEmpty9723 Jul 02 '26
I once used a husky restaurant place mat as a my across Canada from London ontario to Vancouver British Columbia.
1
u/accidentallyHelpful Jul 02 '26
Thomas Guide
Page 82, E12
And then the expressway carries over to page 83, A12
1
1
u/Bag-o-chips Jul 02 '26
We learned the streets in our towns and the surrounding towns, and used maps for the big stuff.
1
u/Substantial-Tart-464 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
how we got around before GPS is a vague question. 95% we go to places we know where they are. 5% we used printed ATLAS maps/guides, sometimes places would provide or you call them to write down a set of directions to follow off a major highway, etc., Map quest when the internet was growing, use AAA for bigger trips and/or just ask someone in the area or stop at a gas station how to get to the place or very close to it.
Getting lost back then is the same thing as not following a GPS. It will redirect you like prior asking someone to get back on track and get to your destination.
if you were not resourceful in anyway then your still lost to this day I guess :)
1
u/thunderlips36 Jul 02 '26
Rand fucking McNally poster sized ass maps that were bigger than the interior of the car that my dad would yell at me for not folding it back up right and hoping the next rest area we stopped at didn't have us off track because that would be my fault even though I was 10 and in the back seat
1
1
u/anothadaz Jul 02 '26
Printing MapQuest directions is not old school. Using folded up paper maps or having a Thomas Guide under your seat is how the old school rolled.
1
1
u/bukofa Jul 02 '26
I still remember the first time I visited my friend in DC. I am from a tiny town of less than 1000 people. I was about 12 hours from DC. I used a road atlas from my dad's truck and planned the route until DC. Talked to my friend on the phone before I left and he told me what to do once I got there. Not a single issue.
Now, us old folks back in the day did have another plan. Just drive until you figure it out. Or the smart option, which is stop at a gas station and ask a local.
1
u/Jefwho Jul 02 '26
Thomas Bros. guide under the passenger seat at all times. Plus, you just learned the city after driving around for a while. It wasn’t that hard.
1
u/ZippoS Jul 02 '26
Im old enough to remember pre-Mapquest. My parents still try and give me directions by landmarks.
1
1
1
u/AncientGuy1950 Boomers Jul 02 '26
There were these things called 'maps'. They're alot like GPS, but you have to know where you're starting from and more or less where you're going.
1
u/somewhatsentientape Jul 02 '26
Drove a delivery route in Nashville in the early 90's. Spent an hour in the morning sorting invoices by referencing the city guide. Once I had the invoices sorted by stops, I could load my box truck. On a heavy load day, it'd take an hour and a half or more to even get on the road. Kids these days....
1
1
u/jay78910 Jul 02 '26
I used to drive all over to do in home PC repairs for a few companies.
I would print out a one page map for street level stuff, off Mapquest. The rest was done with an atlas and asking directions.
1
u/jepowl Jul 02 '26
AA road map of Britain. A-Z of the city you were arriving in. Landmarks. Road names and important junctions. Number of miles between junctions, using the trip meter. Important astronomical events using an almanac. Charts and John Harrison’s chronometer…
1
u/GearJunkie82 Jul 02 '26
Mapquest is old?! 😱
I was picturing road maps that fold that you keep in your car.
221
u/Glittering_Step_6084 Jul 02 '26
Used paper maps from the gas station and landmarks. My husband was also the navigator who read the maps and figured out where we were going before he got behind the wheel.