Earliest road memories

[bandit957]

I think I learned to read from both road signs and 'Sesame Street'. I guess it was before I turned 3.

[cpzilliacus]

Like many road enthusiasts, my interest in roads dates back to early childhood.   But just how early?

My earliest memories are from the early 1960's, when part of a new freeway, the Circumferential Highway (Capital Beltway now), opened near my childhood home in Silver Spring, Maryland.  I was not more than 3 years old then.

The construction of the rest of what was to become the Capital Beltway (especially in Maryland), and the widening of that early section from four lanes to six lanes are vivid memories. 

After that came construction of I-70 between Hagerstown and Frederick (it was to be quite a few more years before all of I-70 between Frederick and I-695 was completed) and then I-95 between I-495 and I-695.

I can also recall when I-66 only ran from I-495 as far west as U.S. 29 at Gainesville.  In those days, traffic had to follow Va. 55 most of the rest of the way from Gainesville to I-81.

[US71]

A few things:

Divided US 66 in Missouri where the EB lanes were apart from the WB lanes. I remember the signs I thought were facing the wrong direction

STOP
Divided Highway
Turn Back
You are Going
The Wrong Way

Wishing now I'd had an opportunity to get a photo

I remember black/white exit signs on 66 with the route spelled out rather than shields
Bus US 66

and Missouri's ubiquitous  button-copy STOP signs.

[flowmotion]

According to my parents, the first word I read was "Texaco", and pretty soon I could identify all the gas stations.

East of Saint Paul MN, there used to be an old-fashioned large letter "Madison" sign on I-94. Another sign said "Hudson Road". There was also one or two stoplights which hadn't been eliminated yet.

Land had been cleared along Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis for the MN-55 freeway, but somehow an old-fashioned Dairy Queen with a blue neon sign survived for a while. The Hi-Lake-23rd St intersection also had a gas station in the middle of it. I can recall construction at the 55-62 interchange, but it was abandoned. (Later the holes and piles became popular with BMX bicyclers.).

When I was 6, I remember seeing "TO US 2" signs in Canada, and thinking they were quite odd.

Unfortunately I was born too late to remember the great era of freeway expansion. It was mostly all there by the time I was aware of it.

[NE2]

When I was 6, I remember seeing "TO US 2" signs in Canada, and thinking they were quite odd.

This and an old NE shield are the holy grail of old road photos.

[theline]

I think I learned to read from both road signs and 'Sesame Street'. I guess it was before I turned 3.

I learned my alphabet very early because I had a chalkboard that had the letters on it. I pestered anyone who came by to read me the letters until I learned them. I then practiced by reading every road sign and billboard along the way. When I didn't know the words, I'd spell them out. I was very proud, but it drove my parents bonkers. My dad finally got me to shut up, and then I just did it silently. I was a very odd child.

[jeffandnicole]

My vivid first memory of something very specifically road related was the construction of Rt. 55 thru my town.  It started construction in the early 80's and opened in 1985, so I was about 6 - 10 years old at the time.

But...I remember going to the shore, picking up the "Highway to nowhere"...which was the portion of 55 built between Rt. 40 & Rt. 47 in the 60's & 70's, well before construction of the rest of 55, so that would put my age at 5 or younger. 

[74/171FAN]

According to my parents, mine came from remembering how to get to Shrub Oak, NY, when I was about 3 or 4 (we were visiting friends that my parents met on a cruise) the year after going the first time.  (I remember getting lost on a random road in Fort Lee, NJ, but I could not tell you what road it was. (It was not I-80 because I remember a stoplight.)

[catch22]

My first real memory was from one of our trips from our home in the western Detroit suburbs to my uncle's farm south of Howell.  The US-16 freeway between Farmington and Brighton was under construction then, and my dad stopped the car along Grand River Avenue (still US-16 but not for much longer) for a few minutes to watch the paving crew at work just east of today's I-96 Exit 153.  Cool stuff for a 6 year old.

The next summer, we were traveling to my grandfather's place in Taylors, SC.  We were somewhere in North Carolina.  As we approached a junction, my dad asked my mom which way to turn.  She looked at the map, sighed, and said, "I'm not sure where we are."  My dad took the map, handed it to me and said, "Where to?"  From that point on, until I left for college, I was the family navigator.

Like other posters, I used road signs and billboards to help learn to read long before kindergarten.  Once I found out the squiggly lines were words I couldn't get enough of them.

[bandit957]

Another source of early literacy for me was the '70s version of 'The Electric Company'. Remember the funky music beds they always used on 'The Electric Company'? Doo doo doo...wokka wokka wokka...doo doo doo...wokka wokka wokka...

Also, I remember doing something interesting when I started a new school in 1st grade. The first thing I did when I got home from school that day was open up the Metro Graphic Arts map of northern Kentucky to see which local municipality the school was in. Somehow I paid very close attention to all the roads when I was on the school bus.

[brianreynolds]

My first real memory was from one of our trips from our home in the western Detroit suburbs to my uncle's farm south of Howell.  The US-16 freeway between Farmington and Brighton was under construction then, and my dad stopped the car along Grand River Avenue (still US-16 but not for much longer) for a few minutes to watch the paving crew at work just east of today's I-96 Exit 153.  Cool stuff for a 6 year old.

Hoo boy, I'll bet you and I could compare notes.  I grew up in Dearborn (west end, south of Michigan Avenue).  My uncle (mother's brother) and his family lived in Ypsilanti.  Long before I-94, there was an expressway option, but most times when we would visit, we would just take US-112 (Michigan Avenue).  Westbound. approaching Ypsi, the road divides, with the old (WWII era) bypass taking the left fork, the older road (Michigan Avenue) to the right, through town.  The BGS for the urban option clearly said "BUS US-112".  I interpreted this literally, quite sure that this sign was directing the inter-city Greyhound driver to the correct destination.  I knew there were truck routes; I had seen the signs and shields.  Logically, why would there not also be BUS routes?  In the back seat with me, my brother (four years older) tried to convince me otherwise, but I would have none of it.  My parents in the front seat never intervened, never let on, but I'll bet they were hiding their grins.

[catch22]

My first real memory was from one of our trips from our home in the western Detroit suburbs to my uncle's farm south of Howell.  The US-16 freeway between Farmington and Brighton was under construction then, and my dad stopped the car along Grand River Avenue (still US-16 but not for much longer) for a few minutes to watch the paving crew at work just east of today's I-96 Exit 153.  Cool stuff for a 6 year old.

Hoo boy, I'll bet you and I could compare notes.  I grew up in Dearborn (west end, south of Michigan Avenue).  My uncle (mother's brother) and his family lived in Ypsilanti.  Long before I-94, there was an expressway option, but most times when we would visit, we would just take US-112 (Michigan Avenue).  Westbound. approaching Ypsi, the road divides, with the old (WWII era) bypass taking the left fork, the older road (Michigan Avenue) to the right, through town.  The BGS for the urban option clearly said "BUS US-112".  I interpreted this literally, quite sure that this sign was directing the inter-city Greyhound driver to the correct destination.  I knew there were truck routes; I had seen the signs and shields.  Logically, why would there not also be BUS routes?  In the back seat with me, my brother (four years older) tried to convince me otherwise, but I would have none of it.  My parents in the front seat never intervened, never let on, but I'll bet they were hiding their grins.

I bet we could too. 

I remember that junction well.  We had some family friends that moved out to Ypsi Township.  We would take the 112 bypass to the (long-gone) Grove Road exit.  I can't recall exactly when they moved out there ('57 or '58 ?), but the MSHD was just starting to build the short piece of present-day I-94 between Harris and Wiard roads.

We did a lot of camping vacations in northern Michigan back then.  As a result, I got to see a lot of the freeway system being built.  It was exciting to see what sections got completed from one trip to the next.  Best example:  I have family pictures taken on a Mackinac ferry in August 1957 with the almost-complete Mackinac Bridge in the background.  The next summer we got to drive across it.

[ARMOURERERIC]

Weekend family shopping trips on McKnight Road on Pittsburgh.  Still 4 lanes, every intersection had a different style signal, most intersections did not even have a left turn signal.  Most did have left turn pockets, but in Ross Township, the entire pavement area of the pocket was painted red.  Anyplace there were ramps, there was a decorative metal post with a fancy lighting unit that had a downward spotlight and was capped with a flashing amber lamp at all the divergance points.  Most were damaged by the late 1960's.  I also remember the installation of the median barrier rail between Nelson Run and Babcock.  Back then there was very lottle as far as development between the plaza across from Ross Park and Northway/Kaufmann's.

[JCinSummerfield]

I can remember the railroad crossing on I-94 near US-23 while on a trip to the Detroit Zoo as a kindergartner.  I also remember the first time I crossed the Mackinac Bridge with my family.  Good days, good times.

[Zeffy]

My earliest memory of road enthusiasm would be in 1998 when my family moved up here from Orlando, Florida. All I can remember is staring at the signs on I-95 (which I knew was a highway at the time, or in my 4-year old brain: "long road with lots of cars". as we passed through all of the states. What I don't remember was how we got from I-95 to Hillsborough - I'm guessing that we used Exit 7B on I-95 north of Trenton for US 206 North. But that's a guess. Anyway, I was always fascinated by those signs, and I remember making lots of pretty simple roadways with LEGOs and whatnot (I only wish I could've added my own signs to those roads) in the near future, but then I took a break from that and wasted my life on video gaming.

Damn it, now that I think about it, where are those LEGOs??

[formulanone]

When I was five, we drove from Nashville to Fort Lauderdale. I don't recall the exact routing, but I-75 was part of it (since I remembered it was the same as my brother's birthyear), as was Florida's Turnpike. On the way back, my dad gave me a map to play around with, and I followed us along the squiggles until I'd fallen asleep.

[SD Mapman]

I remember making lots of pretty simple roadways with LEGOs and whatnot

I actually did that too. I also carved a diamond interchange into some old Styrofoam paneling in my house.

Damn it, now that I think about it, where are those LEGOs??

That's what I want to know.

[JMoses24]

I think my earliest memory stems from the phone books I read as a young boy, probably by age 5. I LOVED the maps. By the time I was a kindergartener I could already tell people my address.

[bandit957]

I think my earliest memory stems from the phone books I read as a young boy, probably by age 5. I LOVED the maps. By the time I was a kindergartener I could already tell people my address.

One of my memories of phone book maps was in the '80s when I was maybe 10 or 11. Cincinnati Bell used to put out a Campbell County phone book, and the inside of the back cover included a map of the county that showed where the nuclear cloud would go if there was a meltdown at the Zimmer power plant. (This was before Zimmer abandoned nuclear energy.)

Another memory I have is of the street maps the local Yellow Pages used to have. It seems like the back cover of the phone book (or maybe somewhere else in the phone book) often included a weird drawing of a woman with orange hair holding up one of the maps. I always drew mustaches and beards on the drawings in our copy of the phone book. Remember, this was in the '80s.

[sammi]

I think my earliest memory stems from the phone books I read as a young boy, probably by age 5. I LOVED the maps. By the time I was a kindergartener I could already tell people my address.

My phone books never had any maps. sadface But I once had an old phone book (probably just a few years under myself) which listed all the ZIP codes of every town and city in the Philippines. I used to know most, if not all of them.

I also know my old phone numbers. (02) 640-0548; (074) 446-6634; (072) 794-1237.

[bandit957]

One of the weird things I remember about the local phone books is after the city of Hamilton added an exclamation point to its name. I never saw anyone use the exclamation point in print, except the White Pages used it in the zip code directory in the back of the book. It looked ridiculous.

[Laura]

When I was three years old, I taught myself how to read through road maps. When I was four, I was able to connect the fact that the roads on the map correspond to real life.

I remember that day very well; my mother had errands to run and wanted to go to the furthest away one first: the bank. We drove from Edgewood, MD to the northeast side of Baltimore City (in the Overlea neighborhood).  We drove north on MD 755, then west on US 40, then took the ramp for MD 43. I remember the way the concrete sounded - like a galloping horse - and the flyover ramp that previously existed to Honeygo Blvd. We then made a left onto Perry Hall Blvd (which turns into Lillian Holt Drive), then a right on Kenwood Ave, then a left onto US 1. We crossed into the city and the bank was on the lefthand side. I remember us pulling into the bank and IT ALL MADE SENSE - the roads on the map follow the roads in real life.

[bandit957]

I remember thinking how weird it was that the state route shields were round until you crossed the river, where they became this odd, boxy shape (which I now know is the state of Ohio). This was when people still referred to Ohio state routes as "Buckeye" routes.

[bandit957]

I thought of a really good early road memory. This was in 1976, shortly before I turned 3. We went on a trip to Philadelphia to visit relatives, and we were on some major road like the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I noticed this strange device along the road (possibly in the median) that was made up of a big, tall pole and had sort of a "beak" that kept continuously opening and closing.

It was one of the strangest things I ever saw along a highway.

Decades later, someone on eMpTyR said it was an old rail signal that survived construction of the turnpike near Philadelphia.

[ghYHZ]

When I was 6, I remember seeing "TO US 2" signs in Canada, and thinking they were quite odd.

Memories!......not of the sign but the drive along US 2.  Back in the 60's when we were kids, we lived in Niagara Falls ON and would travel "home"  to the Maritimes every summer. The route dad always took was the "Thruway"  to near Albany......then Glens Falls, Rutland and across Vermont.....picking up US 2 at St. Johnsbury (and there was always the obligatory stop in Jefferson NH at Santa's Village or Six Gun City!) From Bangor east to the NB Border it was usually the "Airline"  route: ME9.

The fastest route then was through the states.....usually stopping 2 nights along the way in mom & pop motels or road-side cabins.

Today it about 18 hrs.....usually with a one night stop and freeway all the way through Canada except for about 60 km in Quebec.