Most of us have a friend or colleague or crazy aunt who enjoys pointing out, in light of how confused and stressful so much of contemporary life has become, that "Things were just better back then!"

The notion of "back then" is, of course, a rather fluid construct, referring to an imagined period in the not-too-distant past when life itself was simpler, more cohesive, and generally less crappy and downright horrible than in the modern world.

But that sort of thinking is simplistic, if not delusional. Surely life has always been crappy and downright horrible, yes?

But then, every once in a while, we glimpse a token of that lost, idealized world, and we're forced to admit that yes, okay, perhaps there was a time when certain apsects of life -- or at least people's conception of certain apsects of life -- possessed a simple beauty that has, in large part, vanished.

Case in point: A map of the Eisenhower Interstate System, initiated by Ike in 1956, which lays out a national highway network captured in the graphic equivalent of a few strokes of the pen. (Thanks to Design Observer for reminding us of that wonderful site, "Strange Maps," on which countless marvelous creations like the Eisenhower map receive new life.)

As the Strange Maps entry points out, the EIS rendition of an almost inconceivably vast and intricate matrix is a "diagram so simple that it looks rather more like a subway map than a road map."

Things might not have been better back then --- but they sure looked an awful lot easier to wrap one's head around.

--BEN COSGROVE