“Turn Right at the Riverboat”

In an episode of the 1960s television series F‑Troop, a character asks Chief Wild Eagle of the Hekawi tribe—the name a play on “Where the heck are we?”—for directions to Fort Courage, home of the bungling F Troop, also aptly named. Expressionless, the chief replies: “Turn right at the rock that looks like a bear, then left at the bear that looks like a rock.”

The chief’s answer has stayed with me ever since, not merely for its humor. To a ten‑year‑old boy, it was hilarious. Yet his peculiar sense of time and space has left its mark on me as well. To wit: someone this week asked me for directions to a place I had visited just two days earlier. I told him, gesturing, “Go down that way, turn left after about three lights, then go for a while and turn right at the riverboat.”

He looked at me and repeated, “Riverboat?”

It was an honest question. There aren’t too many riverboats where I live. A couple of card rooms, sure, but no riverboats. The one in question is actually a car wash. For some reason, it’s built in the shape of a riverboat, complete with a large paddle wheel. I don’t remember if the paddles churn up water, but it would be a great marketing ploy if they did.

I mention this because my sense of direction is awful, and my ability to navigate landscapes, cityscapes, and whatever‑scapes is just as bad. I even had trouble in New York City, which is more or less laid out on a grid. Washington, D.C. is excusable, since even its lettered streets are byzantine—not to mention the Capital Beltway, which was the result of the so‑called “freeway revolt” in the 1950s–70s. Still, I managed to get around quite nicely when I lived there.

How, you ask?

Memory and pattern recognition. I get a feel for where I’m headed by comparing it to the maps (images) I carry in my memory. From there, I develop an itinerary. This works well if my destination is related in some way to a place I’ve been before. Even so, it may take a few tries before the route establishes itself in my mind. Otherwise, I’m up the creek without a riverboat paddle and have to rely on a combination of logic, luck, and imagination.

GPS can help, although there’s no guarantee. The route may be too circuitous, or the directions too slow for me to respond in time. For instance, it doesn’t tell me to turn right in 350 feet until I’m practically past the turn. And what, exactly, is 350 feet anyway—the right‑field foul pole? Sometimes it’s just plain wrong, which makes it more of a Goose Positioning System than anything else.

PRS—my Pattern Recognition System—has limits, too. I can confuse maps, images, and locations, thinking I’m headed somewhere based on familiar surroundings, only to realize that those surroundings belong to another place in another time (see Brief Thoughts on Maps). I once followed a FedEx truck, believing it was headed back to the distribution center, only to discover that it was outbound. I had followed the wrong truck—which was easy to do, since there were dozens of them on the road at the time. Chalk that one up to the wrong mental map.

There are other challenges, of course—the greatest of which is other drivers. I’ve complained before about two extremes: namely, Prius drivers, who seem to lose cognitive functioning once they put the transmission into gear, and Tesla drivers, who experience something similar—loss of impulse control—even before lowering themselves into the driver’s seat (see Coming Undone).

But whether you’re at one of the extremes or somewhere along the continuum, drivers are crazy. And I mean all of them, all of the time. I often find myself grumbling about being in a video game the moment I back out of the driveway—sometimes even before I back out (see Driving Me Crazy).

I have an idea about how to resolve both horns of the dilemma (pardon the pun). Since I really don’t like driving, I’ve decided not to drive every day and, when I do, to limit trips to an hour. After two hours in the car, I’m practically Jello anyway. The irony is that I really like my car, which is twelve years old with only 62,000 miles on it. That’s old, but it’s the mileage that counts, not the age, right?

In fact, it looks so good I may take it to the riverboat for a car wash. I just don’t remember if it was a left or right at the third light.

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References: IMDb. Image credits: Joshua Michaels, ben ali. Want more? Click on “Amazon” for other publications or go to Robert Brancatelli. Visit other blog readers under “Who You Are.” Comment by clicking on “Leave a Reply” below, or contact us through the Contact tab above.