The Good Book

I have a T-shirt that says “Real Men Don’t Ask Directions.” True.

Even when hopelessly lost, gender pride will not allow a real man to grovel for a way to his destination anymore than he would beg for mercy before an enemy firing squad.

Instead, a real man will wander until there is no hope for finding what he’s looking for and then in desperation reach for the Good Book. I refer not to the Bible but to the Thomas Guide book of maps, a collection we rely upon more heavily than the scriptures. Mathew 28:12 may get us to heaven but the Thomas Guide will get us around L.A. County.

This was never clearer to me than when I went looking for a street in Westchester. I was doing it the real man way, relying upon half an address and an intuitive knowledge of destination, both of which led to a dead-end street.

Everyone seems hostile when you’re lost, as though they sense a stranger in their midst who might do them harm and therefore must be eliminated, a situation not unlike human antibodies attacking invading bacteria.

Rather than ask anyone where I was, I turned to the Good Book. But wait. Page 702, which I needed for the street I sought, was missing. I searched inside the car among Fritos wrappers and corn chip bags and finally found it crumpled and dirty under a seat.

I don’t know how it got there and don’t care. It was a miracle that I found it at all. I located the street OK and, overcome with gratitude, vowed that someday I would repay the Good Book by writing about it. The day has come.

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Production headquarters for Thomas Bros. Maps is on Page 859, Section G-3, of the Orange County book. It is in an area shaded a pleasant green to indicate its precise location in Irvine.

Uncharacteristically, I studied the page before setting out from home because the humiliation of getting lost trying to find a place that makes maps would have been too much for even a real man to take.

I entered a lobby that was awash in maps. There were maps on the wall, in containers, on a computer screen, in drawers, on CD-ROMS and in racks. I suspected, but could not verify, that the receptionist might have had a map tattooed on her behind.

Nancy Yoho, who is vice president of operations, took me around. The company was founded in 1915 in Oakland by cartographer George Thomas. Becoming successful, he naturally moved to L.A. and then to Page 859, Section G-3.

The system for making maps is now 90% computerized so what I saw was mostly people staring at monitors. Two million street guides are sold each year, most of them in L.A. where the Guide is looked upon with biblical reverence.

Company representatives work with 3,000 government agencies and other sources to find new streets, tracts, schools, parks and anything else you’d hope to find in a map book. They update everything then check, double-check, triple-check and recheck so that Oak Street doesn’t end up as Ook Street.

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Because builders are going crazy slapping up cookie-cutter homes with red tiled roofs everywhere, new streets are the big concern at Thomas Bros. Since 1994, the company has added almost 3,000 of them in L.A. County alone. That and constantly shifting boundaries require about 50,000 map changes a year, which you wouldn’t have known without me.

“We’re always open to suggestions,” Yoho said as we wandered through areas of people studying grid lines on their computers. “A person off the street, for instance, suggested we add the Hollywood sign as a point of interest. A good idea. It will be in the year 2000 edition.”

A brisk and efficient woman, Yoho really didn’t want to talk about errors they might have made but finally confessed that once they showed a street as open that was really under construction. Not exactly on the level of, say, printing a page upside-down, but an error nonetheless.

By the way, if you have plans on publishing your own maps by copying theirs, forget it. Fake street names are inserted on every page so they can monitor map-makers who steal from them. Someone tries every once in a while, Yoho says, and that makes their lawyers very happy.

We spent a pleasant hour or so looking at grids and once I felt I had paid sufficient homage to the Good Book, I left Page 859, Section G-3, and wound my way down through G-4 to Page 858 and headed for home.

I got lost once but it was nothing serious. Not for a real man.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com