Daddy never drove by maps. He learned to drive back before the first World War and there was usually only one way to get anywhere so you didn’t need maps and during the war they took down all the sign posts so if they were invaded the invaders wouldn’t know where anything was.

If we had to be somewhere, we’d set off in the general direction – west or south- west and go about fifty miles or so and then we’d stop some stranger and ask, Do you know how to get to the city from here? And the stranger’d give us lefts and rights and landmarks and we’d keep on going until we forgot and then we’d stop some guy and ask again or pull in at a gas station and fill up on air and stale cheese-peanut butter crackers and ask the guy pumping gas.

He might call over somebody else and they’d confer while we ate our crackers, maybe had a coke out of the red flip top ice cooler. They lean in to the window and point down the road or maybe sometimes, back the way we’d been but daddy didn’t like to do that. He’d rather circle around as if forward motion was all that mattered, the old Chevy thumping along until we got where ever it was we were going or dead ended at the ocean waves crashing on the beach and all the sign posts gone to war.