Civics, Geography, and Use of the Globes

One of the problems with road atlases is that you sometimes don't get a sense of the distances involved, particularly in the West.

For example, Wyoming looks like a little state, occupying as it does only one page on the typical atlas, whereas little New Jersey gets a double-page spread. I read a novel by an author from Massachusetts who had a character drive from Cody, Wyoming, down to Cheyenne and back for a little errand one afternoon. It's about a 12-hour round trip, sort of like my driving to Las Cruces to pick up some chicken for tonight's dinner. When C. J. Box visited the store several years ago, his New York publicist had him flying from Cheyenne to Denver (93 miles), then allowed him three hours to drive from Los Alamos to Phoenix (375 miles). "Daddy, who's that driving at Mach 2 with his hair on fire?" "That, son, is the mystery writer C. J. Box on his way to Arizona."

Earlier this week a couple came in soon after the store opened. They wandered around with interest, but, judging from their quizzical looks, I figured that something was amiss for them. "May I help you find something, answer a question, or make a suggestion?" I asked. The woman said, "Where's Roswell?" I said, "It's about 200 miles south of here on US 285. Just go east on New Mexico 502, turn right at Pojoaque, and follow US 285 south to Roswell. It's about a 4-hour drive."

An "oh shit" look passed across her face. They were in the wrong place. There are no aliens in Los Alamos! (Okay, maybe the guys in the Theoretical Physics Division at LANL. But you didn't hear that from me.) She exchanged a few fraught whispers with her husband, and they smiled wanly at us, hurried out to their car, and headed east.

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At least once a summer a visitor asks, "So where up here did they test the atomic bomb? We'd like to get a shot of the crater." We tell them that if the Manhattan Project boys had tested the bomb here, the place would have been uninhabitable, then tell them about Trinity Site. "It's about 200 miles south of here," we tell them. "And it's open only twice a year, the first Saturday in April and the first Saturday in October." And at least once a summer, an "oh shit" look passes over the visitor's face. Then we console them by selling them a piece of Trinitite and a copy of The Green Glass Sea and sending them next door to the museum.


"It's not far from Farmington to El Paso. They're only one Life-Saver and a hairpin apart!"