I miss road maps.

They were like fitted sheets for the car — wonderful to keep things in place, but nearly impossible to refold. Sometimes it was easiest on your blood pressure to crumple them into a ball and cram them into the glove box, which is your closet or junk drawer on wheels.

We collected road maps at service stations, along with commemorative coins, glasses, green stamps or table settings, free with every fill-up of eight gallons or more.

Service stations were magical places where a bell ding-dinged every time you pulled up to a gas pump. An attendant hustled outside, rain or shine, filled your tank for you, checked your oil and washed your windshields — or checked your wiper blades if it was rain, no shine.

Instead of convenience stores with “roller food” and microwave pizza, service stations had mechanics standing ready in car repair bays with car lifts.

And next to the cash register were stacks of free folded road maps, mostly just of your state. It was a special day when Dad rolled into a station that also stocked folded road maps of the entire eastern United States.

I loved road maps. I’d take them home, unfold them across my bed like a full-color bedspread with dotted lines designating rural roads, big blue lines for interstates and green triangles for mountain peaks. I’d trace twisting routes with my finger, chuckling over weird town names and sighing over recreational areas where I wanted to fish like the little guy in the boat on blue patches marked with waves.

I took thousands of trips with my road maps — all from my bedroom with my imagination because I couldn’t pedal a bicycle as far as my finger could trace.

When I “got back home,” I’d try for a solid 30 seconds or so to refold the map before crumpling it into a ball and shoving it under my bed with all the other balled-up states stowed under there.

I didn’t quit collecting and poring over road maps until sometime in my 50s. By then, I owned a car and could drive all those wondrous routes. But folded road maps had been replaced by “The Lady,” a stern voice in my cellphone that commands things like, “In 500 feet, turn left.”

It’s not the same.

The Lady doesn’t appreciate explorations or shortcuts. If I ignore her orders, she — with the barest of a huff — says, “Recalibrating.” Meanwhile, the real lady — my wife — yelps, “You missed the turn! Back up, back up!”

Worse is when Terry adds The Lady in here phone to the mix. I despise being caught between Dueling Ladies. One dictates, “In a quarter mile, continue straight” while the other countermands, “In 800 feet, use the left lane and take a slight right.”

That nonsense wasn’t a problem with free folding road maps. There was difficulty seeing out the windshield with the map accordioned out, but at least I could had every possible route and interesting sidetrack spread out before me without The Lady snapping into a snit if I didn’t turn down the road of her choice.

(Things got a bit dicey when my real lady peered around the edge of the unfolded map and screamed, “Truck! Truck! TRUCK! HIT THE BRAKES!!!” Or, “Those dotted lines aren’t rural roads. They’re railroad tracks! Train! TRAIN!)

I miss road maps. If they ever come back in vogue, remember to memorize your exotic routes the night before a trip, and in case of emergency, it’s also a good plan to pull into a rest area before uncrumpling your fitted sheet of a roadmap to figure out where in the eastern half of the United States you’re lost.

• Map your route to Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com.