Maphead_ Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks - Ken Jennings [87]
But time has winnowed away the faithful. Around three thousand players entered the Massacre each year at its early-nineties peak; last year fewer than five hundred sent in answers. It’s tempting to point to this decline as another apocalyptic sign of How Americans Hate Maps, but instead Jim blames the death of road rallying, the sport whose fans made up his core audience. “We used to ask them their age,” he says, “and in the seventies the answer would come back in their midthirties. Then the next year it’d be late thirties. Then it would be close to forty. It was obvious that we were keeping the same cohort.”
“Every once in a while we’ll hear from somebody saying their father or their mother has passed,” Sue adds. “I think they’re letting us know, not only to stop the mail but to say their late parent really enjoyed it.”
“It’s bittersweet,” Jim agrees.
“Or we’ll hear from someone who says, ‘My eyesight’s not good anymore.’ “
“We don’t dwell on it.”
“But it is sort of nice, that somebody thought enough of us to take the time to write.”
Sometimes a caller will even tell the Sinclairs how much they enjoyed finishing the contest with Mom or Dad one last time. Most solvers play alone, but others evidently make the Massacre a February family tradition. As a map lover, this sounds like an idyllic way to spend quality time with the kids. I imagine three or four generations of delighted faces crowded around an open road atlas. There are steaming mugs of hot chocolate in my mental picture, and for some reason everyone is wearing sweaters. That’s for me, I decide. This year, the Jennings family will be driving its first annual map rally!
Not long after I return home from California, a big white Priority Mail envelope shows up from the Sinclairs’ address. I eagerly rip it open and find a Rand McNally road atlas (with a “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” logo custom-printed on the cover) and a route booklet. The introduction is signed by both Jim and “the Old Maltese,” who wish me luck.
That evening I gather Mindy and the kids together and explain that we’re going on a cross-country drive . . . through the atlas! The reaction I get is excitement before the ellipsis and a suspicious scowl afterward, as though I’d just told a room full of kids that I was going to show them some awesome magic tricks . . . using science!
We open the atlas to northern California and find the Golden Gate Bridge, our starting line. “Go right at Interstate 580 in San Rafael,” I read aloud. “Which among these do you see first? (a) Berkeley, (b) San Francisco, or (c) London.”
“There’s Berkeley,” says Mindy. We all agree, and I circle the first “a” on the answer sheet. Five steps later, by the time we get to Sacramento, the kids are already getting edgy.
“This is boring!” Dylan complains. “When are we going to be done?”
“Most people take twenty or thirty hours to finish the course.”
“Thirty hours?” he groans theatrically.
“Wow,” says Mindy. “This is just like being on a real car trip with Dylan!”
Twenty minutes later, the mutiny is growing. Caitlin is singing to herself on the floor under the table; Dylan is making loud explosion noises and playing with a toy army man wearing a parachute. I’m squinting at a map of southern Oregon, trying to count the lakes I’m passing along U.S. 395. From a car this would be easy; in the atlas, it’s surprisingly headache-inducing. For one thing, I’ve resorted to a ruler to measure the distance from each lake to the highway. (By Massacre rules, I can “see” only things that are less than a quarter inch from the road). Also, I’ve just realized that instruction 16 placed me “upon” this highway—not on it. This is apparently a crucial distinction. I leave one finger to mark my spot on the map while flipping through the rules to try to understand the subtle differences between “on”