There was a great article in the New Yorker (which I now can't find, of course) many years ago about the history of navigation systems and life before road maps and street signs and such. Lots of "turn left at the dead tree" or whatever. Even the early printed navigational aids used the same strategy.

Drat. I wish I could find the article again. It was truly fascinating.

The "use landmarks that no longer exist" thing

When I worked highway survey in rural areas I got some directions like, "take a right were that white van used to be for sale and then a left at the place where Brad and Susan got married".

I get that in calls to funeral homes, in a different way. "I saw Homer Delongely is laid out there. Is he the same Homer whose daddy used to own the filling station on Highway 17 and who married the girl from Valdosta?" All the time. So many variations.

The family house on the Gulf Coast was not that far from a casino that sprung up, so for a while you could say, "Turn at the giant neon alligator sign."

And by giant, I mean like 40 feet tall.

I love these stories of local directions so much. Very little use and a pain to anyone who isn't local or into local history, granted, and at times complex people's lives way beyond necessary, but it is also a remarkable way to pass no-longer-meaningful-knowledge around, and a great (metaphorical) shibboleth.

The family house on the Gulf Coast was not that far from a casino that sprung up, so for a while you could say, "Turn at the giant neon alligator sign."

I used to work in a gov't department that was in a building with a maze-like layout. The receptionist would always give directions to the Minister's Office based on this one piece of artwork..."Veer left at the painting of two pigs and a donkey." We got a new minister, who made them change the artwork because she didn't like the Minister's Office being associated with pigs and donkeys.

I used to work at the building with a giant brass FAO Swarz bear on the corner. SIGH.

We got a new minister, who made them change the artwork because she didn't like the Minister's Office being associated with pigs and donkeys.

Ha! When I worked at WGBH, new staff were warned not to use pictures of Julia Child as landmarks, because there were a lot of them. (There were a lot of pictures in general.)

Thank you Aretha for many things, but changing the news cycle off of the usual is lovely.

One of hte primary landmarks in my rural community was a white barn. The first time I encountered it was when my mother turned onto a road next to a rickety old barn with no paint on it. "Was that the white bar?" "Yes." "It's not white." "It used to be." The last time I was there, I turned at the white barn, which had fallen down a couple of decades previously.