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That became painfully obvious one night when I needed to get from the University of Missouri-Kansas City to a Lee’s Summit home.
I had forgotten the address. I only knew the name of the man serving as the host.
My old reporting instincts dictated that I get a phone book to look up the man’s number and address. It always worked before, and I knew where a pay phone was at UMKC.
But when I got there, I found that the phone and any hope of finding a phone book had been removed.
They were the victims of our cell phone age in which pay phones aren’t used enough to make keeping them worthwhile.
I went to University Center offices. A sympathetic student searched everywhere for me.
No phone book could be found. Curses! Foiled by high technology again.
I have learned from my young journalism friends that phone books to them and many others are about as useful as rotary dial phones are in our digital world.
People look up what they’re seeking on the Internet. Phone books, when they can be found, are neat things now instead of ratty, dog-eared and well-used.
I could see that UMKC — a great hall of knowledge — would be of no use.
I headed to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Surely I could bum a phone book there. It was late, but the place was open.
A nice man searched the front desk for some white pages. No luck. He went into a closet. Bingo! He found it.
I felt as if I had won the lottery. I searched the book and found the Lee’s Summit guy’s name, address and phone number. I called and got directions. Old methods still work.
I wrote down what he told me, knowing the major routes but becoming fuzzy on some of the side streets. No, I don’t have GPS either.
No talking gadgets give me directions.
When I get turned around, especially in the dark, I use my U.S. male sense of finding my way. That got me close.
Afterward, I consulted one of many maps I keep even though that’s such a non-guy thing.
Maps have gotten me around the Kansas City area, the states of Kansas and Missouri and all over the United States for 31 years
I literally would be lost without them. My younger friends ask why I don’t just use the Internet for directions.
Often I do. But sometimes my CRS affliction (Can’t Remember Squat) kicks in, and in a rush I forget to do the Web search in advance.
The maps are my fail safe. A lot of young people aren’t fond of maps either. Some think it takes a PhD to fold one back to its original starting form.
Reading one is another headache for some young people.
But in the dark, on some side subdivision street, I managed to unfold a Kansas City area map, which included Lee’s Summit, and study it by the dim light in my van.
My 52-year-old eyes can’t make out the small lines and street names so I took off my glasses and got closer so with my farsightedness I could see where I needed to go.
Eureka! I found the place.
I drove to the house with stories to tell of the adventure. It had nothing to do with cops or robbers or masked marauders impeding my journey or mechanical breakdowns.
But all of the older people in the home could identify with my many technological challenges.
We baby boomers fear that as time passes we can only expect our skills, hitched to 20th century guideposts, to be further challenged by more vertical 21st century climbs.
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