HITTING THE ROAD: The Art of the American Road Map
by John Margolies
©1996 Who would have guessed that the lowly road map would have had such a fascinating past? Dating back to the turn of the 20th century, oil companies (and others) gave away free road maps at service stations all over the country. Not only were they meant to promote a certain brand of gasoline, but they were also intended to spark America’s interest in travel in general, thereby increasing the consumption of gasoline.
This book is a nostalgic journey into yesteryear, with its colorful road map cover art depicting changing styles of cars, clothing and service station design. A typical early road map cover showed a handsome chap driving a barge-sized convertible with his favorite gal by his side, her hair and scarf flying in the wind, breezing along the highway in some scenic locale. Others showed the always helpful gas station attendant pointing out directions to a lost motorist at some snazzy, sparkling clean service station. (Does anyone remember gas station attendants?) Women drivers started appearing in road map art during the decade of the 1930s.
The maps themselves evolved over the years as new roads to everywhere were built. At first confusing, since roads weren’t numbered or named, they later became easier to understand when the state of Wisconsin, in 1918, started numbering its “state highways” and the idea caught on in other states. There was even a map of the route from NYC to Florida printed upside down, with south pointing up, so snowbirds wouldn’t become confused about right and left turns on their way south.
Today, with GPS and other computer aids, road maps have become almost obsolete. The first Arab oil embargo in 1973 brought about the demise of the free road map, but they can still be had, if you want to pay $5 or $6 for them. Personally, I prefer my Rand McNally Road Atlas. I never got the hang of the unfolding and refolding of the nearly one hundred different origami-like folding patterns that have been patented over the years. Old road maps, in good shape (rare), are now sought-after collectors’ items.
PUMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE: Glory Days of the Gas Station
by John Margolies
©1993 I got a big kick out of this beautifully designed picture-book. With just the right blend of text and graphics, it tells the history of filling stations, gas pumps, oil companies, gas signs, road maps, early advertising, pop architecture and just about anything else that has to do with putting petrol in our flivvers.
Just paging through the engaging photos, old-time postcards, and advertising illustrations of the gas stations of yesteryear took me back to the 50s and 60s, when two of my uncles owned a small-town Phillips 66 station where I bummed sodas and candy bars when I was a kid.
One of the sad things that the reader realizes is that these old-time filling stations, so uniquely individual and creative, are, for the most part, just memories now. As the book points out, “Individualism has been replaced by computerized predictability,” and we are so much the poorer for it.
A bit of wistful nostalgia to take one's mind (momentarily) off today’s sky-rocketing oil and gas prices.
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