North Star Writers Group

I was watching TV the other night when I caught a commercial for one of those computerized map services that guarantee you will never again get lost when traveling the highways and byways of America if you become a subscriber.

C’mon, folks, get serious.

For more than 40 years I’ve been losing my way in America on a regular basis and I’ve loved every minute of it. In fact, I’ve written some of my best newspaper stories after becoming hopelessly lost in at least a dozen states, three Canadian provinces and the District of Columbia.

My first such adventure occurred nearly 30 years ago when my wife Sally and I made a wrong right turn while driving home from Chicago and ended up lost in Gary, Indiana. The closest I had ever gotten to Gary, Indiana came several years before when I saw the movie The Music Man.

It was early evening and we didn’t have the foggiest idea where we were. After searching for a service station so I could ask directions back to the super-highway, I found there wasn’t a single station that was open. I spotted a roadside produce stand and stopped.

“Hi, there,” I called to a woman behind the counter.

She eyed me suspiciously over the rutabagas, squash and celery, then said something in Spanish. Unfortunately, I don’t speak a single word of Spanish, unless you count “ole”.

I do, however, know several German words, including most of the song Silent Night, because I took a German class in high school back in the days when the crust of the earth was still cooling.

As I stood there staring dumbfounded at the woman in front of me, a man emerged from the back of the business. As it turned out, he spoke fluent English and Spanish and, to make a much longer story short, I not only got the directions I needed, but also picked up a nice fresh watermelon and a nifty little feel-good feature story about the woman and the man who’d come to America just months before and were running a successful business.

Too much fuss is made over getting lost in America. My theory is getting lost often leads to some wonderful adventures. You meet new people, see new places and have more to talk about.

Furthermore, people who get lost on a regular basis give service station employees all over the country an opportunity to be heroes.

I say that because, with the sky-high prices of gasoline these days, service station owners and employees have actually become villains. Nobody looks forward to stopping at a service station anymore because when you leave, your wallet is much lighter than it was when you got there.

But, if you stop for directions instead of petrol, the station owner or employee has a chance to be your hero, your knight in shining armor. He or she can, in an instant, clear up your confusion and get you safely on your way again.

Any way you look at it, that’s pretty neat!

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This is Column # BB23. Request permission to publish here.