December 6, 2012--GPS

This time we are traveling without maps, allowing our GPS to guide us from New York to Gettysburg and then on to Blacksburg, VA and Aiken, SC. We left our old Esso paper accordion fold-up road maps home and are letting our Garmin steer us. Rona is the navigator and is thus able to sit unencumbered, supervising my driving, while Lola alerts us to upcoming exits.

Lola is the name we have given to the GPS's disembodied voice. "She" is very forgiving, shows no attitude when I miss a turn. She calmly says, "Proceed 500 feet and make a U-turn," which I dutifully do, while Rona, less forgiving, chides me for not paying attention.

This is a wonderful device except for one thing--in meta-geographic terms, at any given time we have no idea whatsoever where we are.

We may be on I-79 and need to head southwest for another 27 miles before taking exit 17B; but from Lola we know only that and not if we are in North or South Carolina, much less what towns might be 20 miles to our east or west.

I have that interest--to know what state I'm in, to be able to situate it within its boarders; and I also like to be able to come upon archaeological sites and any places associated with presidential history--a birthplace, a library, and especially a graveyard. Old fashioned maps were very good at this; Lola seems oblivious.

Perhaps if I were more fully a part of the 21st century I would know how to program our GPS to alert us to these sites, but mired as I am to the 20th, I'll have to settle for "Proceed for a mile and a half and then, on your right, take exit 3A, south to Charlotte." From that, at least, I know I am in North Carolina and from elementary school geography, know it is the capital. Or at least I think I remember that.

There is, though, one thing at which Lola excels--locating out-of-the-way BBQ places. Those off the highways, even far from blue highways, joints a half mile up dirt roads where the pulled pork is always the best. Without her we would not have been able to find Bubba's the other day nor Carol Lee for incandescent donuts the next morning, in spite of pledging, after gorging ourselves on BBQ, beans, and Brunswick Stew at Bubba's, that we wouldn't eat for at least two days. But somehow we managed to down eight of her right-out-of the fryer yeast donuts less than twelve hours later.

Thank you Lola!

But no thanks to you we stumbled on and made an interesting side visit to Harpers Ferry. We were dutifully following her turn-by-turn directions from Gettysburg to Blacksburg when a road sign we were about to race by and ignore indicated we were only three miles from the site of John Brown's infamous 1859 raid.

"That's the Harpers Ferry, in West Virginia," I said, all excited. "You know, the place where John Brown planned to steal weapons and give them to slaves in the hope of inciting a slave revolt and . . ."

I could sense Rona rolling her eyes; she had had her fill earlier of me delivering a series of mini-lectures as we marched around Cemetery Ridge following the route of Pickett's disastrous charge and how his defeat changed to fortunes of the Union Army and what went on the days before and the day of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and . . .

"But we're in Virginia, aren't we?" She would never have had to pose that as a question if she had her old standby Esso map of the Mid-Atlantic States. "It can't be his Harpers Ferry. Isn't West Virginia more than three miles from here?"

"See what Lola says," I suggested half mockingly, knowing she was more Rona's friend than mine.

"Very funny. You know she doesn't share that information."

"I remember from when there were maps," I couldn't control my inclination to be bad, "that Virginia and West Virginia and even Maryland at about this location have boarders all scrunched together. That every mile or two you seem be in one state of the other. So let's give it a try."

Which we did.  Following instinct, guided by the direction of the sun since the signposts were inadequate, we wended our way down a steep bluff to what turned out to be the Upper Potomac River, where back in the day Harper had his ferry, and John Brown led his ill-fated raid.  We even stumbled upon Storer College, one of the first places in America where after the Civil War a version of a higher education was provided to freed slaves. All very interesting, all very inspiring.

But then we made our way back up to Route 330 and again placed ourselves in Lola's able hands. Tonight she suggests we eat at the Swamp Fox restaurant in Aiken, where the shrimp-grits, she says, are supposed to be authentic.