So, I’m old enough to have driven in that forgotten time before smartphones. A lot of directions were based on landmarks. Like…
Go down the street until you see the house with the big tree with a swing in it. Take the second left after that and follow until you get to the corner where the Stop and Go used to be (it’s a 7-11 now). If you hit the highway you went too far.
Basically if you couldn’t read a map well, you got lost a lot. That and you could pull into any gas station or even better a pizza place and ask them for directions.