Despite the onslaught of GPS devices and apps, the time-honored AAA TripTik has managed to avoid the Grim Reaper.
Believe it or not, the auto club distributed 1.5 million preprinted TripTiks in 2014.
If you haven’t reached your 30th birthday, a few words of explanation.
Back in the day, we would routinely go to the local AAA office, tell them where we wanted to go on vacation, and they’d set us up with a “TripTik,” a narrow booklet of preprinted maps with the best route traced in Magic Marker. As you’d complete one part of your journey, you’d flip over the page to the next map.
AAA now boasts thriving customizable apps, and not long from today, the good ol’ TripTik will breathe its last.
Fortunately, another popular 20th-century travel guide was buried long ago.
The Travelers’ Green Book wasn’t nearly as widely known as the TripTik because it was printed for a relatively small percentage of the population — people universally known at the time as “Negroes.”
When Victor Green came up with the idea in the late 1930s, much of America still regarded African-Americans as secondhand citizens, unwelcome (and sometimes even outlawed) in many white-owned hotels and restaurants.
Obviously, traveling would be infinitely tougher if you didn’t know whether you’d be allowed to patronize an establishment until you got there. So Green assembled a guide that included black-friendly hotels, restaurants, taverns, gas stations, barbershops and beauty parlors.
The guide was printed from the late 1930s all the way up until 1964, when the Civil Rights Act finally prohibited discrimination at public accommodations.
According to the Washington Post, Green was a postal worker who died in 1960. But he visualized a better future as early as 1949, when he wrote in the introduction to that year’s guide: “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published.
“That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.”
Cuyahoga Falls reader Drew Shorter directed me to a digital collection of the guides recently created by the New York Public Library. An edition from the early 1950s lists nine Akron businesses that were black-friendly.
Hotels:
• The Green Turtle at Federal and Howard.
• Garden City at Howard and Furnace.
• Matthews at 77 N. Howard St.
Barbershops:
• Goodwill’s at 422 Robert St.
• Matthews at 77 N. Howard St.
• Allen’s at 42 N. Howard St.
Tavern:
• Garden City, 124 N. Howard.
Service station:
• Dunagan at 834 Rhoades Ave.
Private residence:
• R. Wilson, 370 Robert St.
None of these places remain. In several instances, once-bustling locations have reverted to vacant lots.
The only private house on the list, at 370 Robert St., is today a tiny empty patch of land on a short street about half a mile southeast of Archbishop Hoban High School. Just down the street, a private residence stands on the former site of Goodwill’s Barber Shop.
Most of these businesses are long forgotten — with one notable exception.
The Hotel Matthews once occupied a now-vacant parcel across Howard Street from today’s Interbelt Nite Club.
An Akronite named George Mathews started a barbershop there in 1920 and opened a hotel on the same site five years later.
For decades, the Hotel Matthews (yes, spelled differently than the owner’s name) thrived in the midst of a red-hot entertainment district, a spot where the giants of jazz slept after performing nearby — folks like Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie and Cab Calloway.
Business soured as the years turned to decades and the culture changed. The hotel closed in 1978 and was torn down a few years later.
A handsome monument now marks the spot.
Clearly, some aspects of that era are sorely missed.
Even more clearly, aspects of that era that gave birth to The Travelers’ Green Book were an abomination.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com. He also is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bob.dyer.31.