You Can’t Get There From Here!

My daily three mile walk takes me along Dairy Road in Sneads, beginning at my home, proceeding in a southerly direction to U.S. 90, then returning on a reciprocal of this course until I reach the gate that marks state property, or a barking dog, whichever occurs first, and then back home. I have walked a mile on each lap, and I often come up with ideas for my next week’s column as I pace myself. Seldom, however, has an idea been handed to me as was the one last Monday.

The gate is the access to the old Apalachee dairy, which is now a cattle feeding operation. There is a warning sign there, but it is not needed, for most cars have given up long before because of potholes. The street is named “Dairy Road” in honor of its location. One of my neighbors thinks that it should be named “Cow Flap Lane”, but that has even less appeal than Dairy Road. I am certain that along about July of each year a case could be made for changing it to “Gnat Boulevard”.

I had begun my third mile that day and was heading north, straight and true, according to my built-in directional compass. This has nothing to do with my built-in moral compass, which strays quite often. A SUV passed me at a fair clip, then reached the gate and turned around. As it approached me it slowed and stopped. The passenger side window lowered, and a nice looking lady, holding a piece of paper in one hand, asked: “Could you direct me to the West Unit of Apalachee Correctional Institution?” I gave her the directions: return to U. S. 90, turn east, go one half mile and take the left fork at the sign. She thanked me and then said, looking at the paper one more time: “MapQuest says turn on Dairy Road”, and I nodded and pointed south and she left.



And I had my story.



I have been called by some Great Power to give my readers a lecture on navigation. I must turn the world away from MapQuest and OnStar and other faulty systems. This has to be done quickly, before we have a massive traffic jam on Dairy Road, which will frighten the cattle and cause me to quit walking and to get obese and big boned again.

I am not surprised that there is a problem. This “happening” pops up with regularity on Dairy Road. Usually there are two folks in the automobile; a man driving and his wife sitting in the passenger seat. The man is grouchy looking, and often is thumping the GPS with one hand while he is motioning with his other hand for his wife to shut up. She is probably chiding him for not asking directions back at the Visitors’ Center when they crossed the state line near Pensacola.

I can understand frustration with these instruments. I do not own a GPS, but my son has one in each of his cars. Last year I went to Sunrise, his hometown, while he was traveling for his agency, so that I could spend time with my fifteen year old grandson. Stuart wanted us to go to a barbeque spot one evening; I believe it was named “Upchuck’s Ribs and Such”. He programmed the GPS, and it informed us that we must get on the Turnpike, turn north and go 735 miles until we reached the city limits of Savannah. It seems that city also has an “Upchuck’s”, and we were ordered to go there. I disregarded the directions, got out the city map and plotted my course. Each time I made a turn the voice on the machine complained.

We must return to the tried and true methods of navigation. I have been misled only once by celestial navigation and that was really my fault. If you are not familiar with celestial, it is the system, developed chiefly by Arabs, where a seaman looks through a sextant at a star, checks the angle between it and the horizon and finds his position on the globe. Bill Pennewill, who was probably one of the Navy’s finest navigators, insisted that the other officers of the USS TWEEDY occasionally do a “day’s work” in navigation, determining the position of the ship both morning and evening, plotting courses and making marks on charts. Once off the Atlantic coast I shot Venus, marked the time and gave Bill the coordinates. Bill checked them out and then said: “Holmes, take off your hat”. I asked him why, and he informed me that according to my calculations we were in the nave of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

We owe a great deal of thanks to the those nomads of the deserts, who found out that the road signs between oases were not always accurate and began naming the stars so that they could follow them from spot to spot. Aldebaran, one of the Hyades, still is up there somewhere. So is Betelgeuse. I like Betelgeuse because some Hollywood type picked the name up, changed it to Beetlejuice and made a scary movie using it. Scary movies are about as good for cuddling as watching submarine races. A person can also use Ursa Major, also known as the Big Dipper, to find the north. Below the equator the Big Dipper does not have as many stars, and is known as the Southern Cross. I believe that this is because the Australians have too many marsupials. Kangaroos, koalas, and wombats abound. We only have ‘possums, so we get an extra star.

The Arabs also gave us the Arabic numerals, the numbers that we use every day. These begin with 0 and end with 9, or maybe 10, or 20 if you aren’t wearing shoes. Arabic numerals are easy to use. If we didn’t have them we would be trying to use Roman numerals. Have you ever tried to add XVII to CXXI without changing them to 17 and 121? Can’t be done, can it? That’s why Emperor Nero burned so many Christians. He was a moderately good man as Roman emperors went. I believe that he simply lost count. If he had used Arabic numbers he would have stopped at ten Christians, or maybe twenty, since he wore sandals and would probably have used his toes to add them up. We Church folks might even be celebrating St. Nero’s Day if he had not been trying to tally using Roman numerals.

When the good ship TWEEDY was activated in 1961 we were sent to Guantanamo Bay for Underway Training. As with many old ships, though, she immediately lost all electronic navigation capabilities upon departing Pensacola. Bill simply took star sights, plotted our course using dead reckoning and we entered the Windward Passage straight down the middle. Our arrival inspectors marveled at this, and complimented Bill for finding the Passage with no electronic aid. Bill looked at them and retorted: “Columbus found it without any!”

And this brings up comedian Flip Wilson’s famous monologue on Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America. According to Flip, Columbus set out to discover America because that was where Ray Charles was from. Flip described the voyage in detail, even having ol’ Chris telling his crew to “stop”, “back up” and “watch out for the edge”.

All of this is quite hilarious, until you find out that the Naval Academy does not teach celestial navigation any more. Some day, possibly next week, a young navigator will turn on his GPS and find that it doesn’t work because some six year old is playing games on a computer and has blacked out the satellite that sends the beams down to the ship, and he will not know what to do. When this happens, I hope he will “watch out for the edge”…..and for St. Patrick’s Cathedral.