in the 80s you could call AAA and tell them where you're planning to go on a road trip and they would send you a spiralbound roadmap of the route with gas stations, hotels, and construction zones highlighted
Part of me still misses TripTiks. It was fun to go through them ahead of trips and always have that nicely printed, spiral bound book with you on the road.
At some point in the 90s they automated TripTiks with the idea that you'd print them at home yourself. It was all the same info but the magic was gone.
Nice!
I wonder if there is a print-on-demand service that will still make these for you. Could certainly DIY.
Ah yeah, that's the good stuff. I always got the side-bound version.
Wonder if a day will come when they stop making road atlases:
Remake it and call it TripTok
My grandma actually recommended I do this last year. I was already contacting AAA about some other thing, and jokingly brought up road trips. They went, "Yeah we can help!" I was kinda adorable.
I'm sure you were... But what does that have to do with what they said?
They only agreed to help because OP was just so darn cute.
My father was an itinerant minister. He traveled all over the country. We made great use of TripTik (I think that's what it was called).
GeoGuessr mfs inventing the first time machine to have this job:
GeoGuessr person:"ok, now which directions are the shadows pointing? Any wildflowers or birds in the area?"
Caller: "I'm just looking for a gas station"
"Just tell me what type of material is the road. Come on!"
“I can’t help you until you tell me the typeface in the nearest street street sign!”
How widespread was this? I grew up in the 80s/90s and pre GPS we just had a map in the car. I've never heard of such a hotline until seeing this post.
Maybe a call centre operated by map producers, intended more for questions about routes and conditions rather than "take the third left" kind of navigation.
Yeah, it sounds like the kind of thing you could do but would pay out the butt for as a private service. Road map books and asking directions were my go-to.
Of course, post-internet but pre-GPS there was always mapquest.
But, when would you use this? Stop at a gas station, and instead of getting a map, you make a phonecall?
Rest area payphones. Its why most rest areas have a huge blown up atlas map these days
edit: and as a note, the death of the rest area payphone is a huge problem some places. you ever look at a coverage map for west virginia? you break down or get lost out there and you're totally fucked
Yes, but what gorgeous country to get fucked in! When my wife PCSd from Long Island to Fort Knox, we drove through that country several times.
She would also spend a lot of time at Fort Lee (now Gregg-Adams) and the drive from Fort Knox to Fort Lee also crossed amazing parts of WV.
everyone had maps, but they weren't always current
This is actually a map of the Netherlands and I'm from there. I'm also old enough to remember a time without mobile phones. This was probably the call centre for triple AAA, in Dutch the ANWB. We had these emergency telephone poles along the highways. When stranded (car broke down) and without a map you could easily call aid through them with these phones, which they also knew where they were, for easy dispatching.
I'm also dutch, and Im pretty sure you couldn't call for route advice from the ANWB poles. Or at least, you couldn't in the later years, maybe it was different in the 60s.
It does make a lot more sense these people are planners, not general navigation advisers.
I mean, payphones were at most stops. Rest areas, etc.
I would think using that service to plan a route ahead of time would be optimal...
That's what a AAA TripTik was for.
here is a cool article on a few different jobs lost with photos https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/jobs-that-no-longer-exist/
my favorite is the human alarm clock and went and shot your window with a pea shooter to wake you up
I will still do this. What does an alarm clock cost? $500? $1,000? I'll do it for half that.
For a good time, call 1194.
This graffiti was seen, around 1993, in various toilets, referencing the national talking-clock service.
1194 == "On the third tone it will be 3:45 and 30 seconds, beep beep beeep."
These still exist, except it's not a number you call, it's a shortwave station that you tune into.
Check out http://websdr.org/ if you don't have your own. From there you can play with various shortwave radios from around the world. The first one on my list is my favorite cause it picks up a lot of stuff.
You can still call wwv and wwvh.
Specifically 5, 10, and 15mhz AM. There are others, but you'll really hear NIST WWV/WWVH if you're in North America/Pacific.
555-1212 was the number where I was.
I still use it on websites that ask for my phone number for some gods unknown reason.
i can see this causing marriage arguments
you should call the hotline John
I got this Margaret!
Another one of life's simple pleasures ruined by the government lizard overlords.
I lived in Chicago from 2004 to 2007 and NYC from 2007 to 2009 and I did not have a smartphone not even sure if they were around then. There was a number you could text the cross streets you were at and the cross streets you wanted to go to and it would give you step by step directions to get there with public transportation. I used it daily.
"Hot single navigators in your area waiting for you call – call now & let them guide you!!"
(I had a car on early 2000s in which the oem satnav lady pronounced the local names of towns kinda extra seductively)
Just gotta find a friendly middle aged white man and you can have this service for free
You carry around a universal translator, and a global atlas in your pocket. Leave me alone.
This is not the friendly middle aged man you are looking for
I'm getting Godzilla-nervous-system vibes from the front-most map, not gonna lie...
Haha that is a new way to look at roadmaps of the Netherlands, I love it
This still exists, at least in Mexico
"Se encuentra en méxico."
"Muchas gracias!"
Sure we lost that particular job, but we also gained the job of driving around with a cam car collecting data. Then there's who ever takes all those pictures and compiles them into street view. Sure its highly automated, but someone had to automate it..
Imgine what the hunters thought when they lost their jobs to farms.
Also rembered what community this was on after I typed all that out.....
The irony being how much the standard quality of life has dropped compared to the people seen working in this photo. At some point, expect to be just another pest barely tolerated within the urban environment. For many homeless, that's what they already are.
I never ever heard of this, I don't think it was a thing here, father always asked locals or already had a map he bought from a car magazine.
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