Somebody over at AOL put together a list of 12 things families did on trips in the 60s and 70s that you hardly see anymore, and tell you what, it read like a diary from my childhood. Paper maps spread across the hood of the truck. A cooler wedged between the kids in the back of a station wagon. Postcards mailed home before you'd even gotten there.

The station wagon is the one that gets me. That rear-facing back seat where the kids rode, no seatbelt law to speak of, dad's arm shooting back to swat somebody acting up. We had an old wagon with wood paneling on the sides and my folks ran that thing until the floorboards rusted clean through. Nobody thought twice about it. You loaded up and you went.

Paper maps were an art form. My dad could fold one back the right way every single time, which is a skill I never mastered and I doubt I'm alone there. You planned your route at the kitchen table the night before, and if you missed your exit you pulled over at a gas station and asked a human being for directions. Imagine that. Asking a stranger and trusting the answer.

The cooler packed from home was another one. Bologna sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, thermos of sweet tea, and you ate lunch at a roadside picnic table instead of dropping 40 bucks at a drive-thru. Motels with the neon sign and the pool right off the parking lot, where you hoped like anything dad would spring for the room with the vibrating bed. Postcards bought at a drugstore for a nickel and dropped in a mailbox so it beat you home.

And pay phones. You learned your home phone number cold because that's how you called somebody if the truck broke down or you got separated at a rest stop. Quarters taped inside your shoe, that was real parenting.

Reading through the list, most of these things didn't disappear because they stopped working. They worked fine. They disappeared because something easier came along, and easier isn't always better. A GPS will route you down an interstate past every good fishing hole in the state, and it'll never once tell you about the diner two exits up that's been frying chicken since 1962. A local at a gas station will.

My rule's always been the same, whether it's a truck or a tackle box or a road trip: does it hold up when it matters? Half the stuff on that list held up for decades, and the trips we remember weren't smoother back then. They were just more ours. Dad taking a wrong turn and finding a swimming hole. Mom navigating with a map on her lap.

I've still got a road atlas in my truck behind the seat. Phone dies out in the Ozarks faster than you'd think, and that old paper has never once lost signal.