Skip to content

License plate musings:

So....I live in an area where lots of people come from all over the world to visit. I enjoy hearing the different languages, seeing evidence of different cultures. Here in agricultural Nevada, we’ve got cowboys. And tattooed folk. Sometimes they mix. So I enjoy seeing women wearing saris and guys with turbans. I marvel at the lack of personal space evidenced by Chinese people. These folks have absolutely no concept of personal space. Get near a bunch of them and prepare to be crowded. I remember watching the eclipse last year with a group like this. We were on a bluff, over looking Lake Tahoe. Plenty of room, lots of open space, lots of trails. I had my tripod set up to photograph the eclipse. They crowded around me so close that I had to watch to make sure my tripod didn’t get knocked over. Nice people, we communicated as best we could with the language barrier. They loaned me their special little viewing glasses, I let them look on my camera monitor to see what I was capturing. We shared OOOHs and AHHHs. But they crowded me. Where was I? Oh yeah, license plates. So one of my other hobbies is noticing out of state license plates. I can always tell when it is tourist season by the number of out of state plates I see. Some plates are beautiful. They have rainbows and bright colors and catchy slogans. Then there is Delaware. Now there’s a no-nonsense plate. No bright colors. No mountains. No catchy slogan. Just...the plate number. I did a little research on Delaware license plates. Apparently they’ve always been some variation of light numbers and letters on a dark background. I saw no evidence of rainbows or mountains. What kind of state does that? I went to Delaware.gov to explore a bit, and saw an archived blog post in which was written this: “In exploring this unique part of First State culture – the program will include such topics as the desirable black & white porcelain sets from the 1940s, the black stainless steel tags from the 1950s, and the story behind the controversial font-style changes in the early 1990s.” Yes folks, apparently it is a cultural icon in Delaware to have plain black and white.

Ok. ...continue reading "To thine own self be true…..or……license plate musings"