November 16

A few days ago we were driving around and I stopped at a red light behind a car with a South Carolina plate. In case you haven’t seen one, it is mostly light blue with a palmetto tree in the center (South Carolina is the Palmetto State).

Across the top is this legend: “Smiling Faces. Beautiful Places.” I had a little time to contemplate this sentiment. Not exactly as inspirational as “Live Free or Die!” is it? In fact, it sounds like something an ad agency might come up with, which is probably what happened. Or it might have come from a Hallmark greeting card, bought off the rack. It’s insipid. It offends no one. It says nothing. Absolutely perfect for this day and age. I mean, get real. Do you really think that, when they think of South Carolina, everyone instantly thinks of smiles? (What do they think of ? I have very little idea, as I know very little about the state. Palmettos, I guess. Now, if I knew what a palmetto was, I’d be somewhere, wouldn’t I?)

South Carolina has a state motto. In fact, it has two. But both are in Latin, which is probably a hard sell to put on a license plate. One is Dum spiro spero. (While I Breathe, I Hope.) Actually, this one strikes me as another Hallmark phrase. If this was Maryland, where Agnew was briefly governor, we could make a joke about Dumb Spiro … but it isn’t. The other is Animis opibusque parati. Whew! Means “Prepared in Mind and Resources.” Even worse than the first, since most people couldn’t pronounce it (or would be afraid to try), and frankly, it stinks in either language.

Several years ago Lee and I had a project to take a picture of as many license plates as we could, without leaving Oregon. (Lee and I love projects, the sillier the better!) (Plus, it reminded me of car games when we went on long trips with my family. There were booklets that asked us to spot various things, and the license plates were the most fun.) We eventually got all the states and most Canadian provinces, Guam, Puerto Rico, and a few Mexican states. Did you know the plate for the Northwest Territories, and now also Nunavut—the newest province, just 9 years old—is in the shape of a polar bear? No kidding! A rectangular polar bear!

Something

about the phrase rang a bell. I looked it up, and sure enough, there it was on the South Dakota plate: “Great Faces. Great Places.” Which just proves that mediocre mind think alike, right? But South Dakota at least has some excuse for the “faces” part: Mount Rushmore. We do think of faces when we think of South Dakota. Big faces. As for places … well, I haven’t been to South Dakota (one of 5 states I’ve missed), but I’ve seen plenty of pictures. I guess there are some great places … if you like dirt.

It all reminded me of a big hoo-hah a few years back from my native state of Texas. Somebody wanted to put “The Friendship State” on the license plates. Probably the same folks—most likely newly arrived from Kennebunkport—who objected to the slogan that the Texas Highway Department puts on the back of its regular signage: “Don’t Mess With Texas!” What it means is, “Don’t Litter,” but with a Texas flavor, you idiots! That one was shot down, and so far as I know those signs are still up. The “Friendship State” business didn’t get anywhere either, thank the lord. Real Texans (like myself) pointed out to the damyankees (like George W. Bush) that Texas is, always has been, and always will be “The Lone Star State.” End of story.

It doesn’t take much to set me off on a search (or to write something on an obscure subject, like this), so I started looking through the license plates of other states. Made some interesting discoveries, which I will now share.

Arkansas: “The Natural State.” Oh, really? That’s a new one. Used to be the “Land of Opportunity.” That was a damn lie, but at least it sounded heartfelt. What’s natural about Arkansas, or unnatural about other states?

Massachusetts: “The Spirit of America.” Another generic sentiment, meaning nothing. (The Spirit of ’76 I could understand, but no!) I guess they were a little desperate, as their state motto is in Latin and too long for a plate: Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem. (By the sword she seeks peace under liberty.) I dunno, the last few years have made me feel a little queasy to see the words peace, liberty, and sword in the same sentence.

North Dakota: “Discover the Spirit.” More spirits. You’d think the damn country was haunted. And they had no less than four state nicknames to choose from, including the one that used to be on the plate: “The Peace Garden State.” (I don’t know what a peace garden is, but you can’t go wrong with peace, in my book.) Also “The Roughrider State,” “The Flickertail State,” and a genuinely funny one: “Norse Dakota.” Also two state mottoes. A longwinded one: “Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.” And a pithy one: “Strength From the Soil.” Which works for me, because soil is dirt, and North Dakota seems to be mostly bare dirt, pretty much like South Dakota.

West Virginia: “Wild, Wonderful.” So, now black lung is wonderful? State motto: Montani semper liberi (Mountaineers are Always Free). I sort of like that, but maybe they thought they’d be confused with Montana.

There’s two that I remembered from my childhood. New Jersey identifies itself as “The Garden State.” I didn’t realize how funny that was until I actually got to New Jersey. Maine names itself “Vacationland.” What, doesn’t anybody actually live there, other than Stephen King?

At least four states have a URL on their plates. There might be others. “Not Just a State, We’re a Website!”

Sometime over the last 40 years or so states began to issue VNTYPL8S. You get to pick out the numbers and/or letters, as long as it doesn’t say something like FUK EWE. (Though every once in a while somebody fools the DMV. Actual plates: OH SI-IIT, SSABMUD (read it in a mirror), STIFFIE, 2FKN FST, and 455HO13 [hint: the 4 is an A].) I don’t know where this started but it proved to be a gold mine. People really would pay extra to write their own plate! Soon the idea spread to most states, as the next best voluntary tax on the foolish after the lottery.

Then things really got wild. I was living in Oregon as this trend progressed, and it started with a re-design from the old plates, which were just numbers, blue with yellow letters or vice versa. Some years they said “Pacific Wonderland.” But other states were putting all sorts of extra designs on their plates. It was time to jump on the bandwagon. A competition was held in 1990, and the new plates were to have a tree in the middle and the outline of mountains in the background. Works for me. About the only other thing you’d need to perfectly describe Oregon is to add rain. (Western Oregon, anyway. Eastern Oregon, 2/3 of the state, is pretty much desert, but nobody goes there who doesn’t live there.) A woman won $5000 for the design.

Then the doo-doo hit the propeller.

The colors were all wrong. The tree was too light. The mountains looked hazy. The sky was brown. Everybody in Oregon seemed to have an opinion. The mountains should be easier to see. The tree should be a darker green. The sky should be blue, goddamit! The government caved in. The colors were changed. The woman returned the $5000 in protest.

So we had our new standard plate. But other states were turning out lots of new designs, more than one for each state. They commemorated things, or said things you might put on a bumper sticker (only those are so unsightly!). So Oregon brought out a plate with a covered wagon on it, commemorating the Oregon Trail. Then there was a salmon. Pretty! Then a Crater Lake scene. Also pretty. The most recent is something called the Oregon Cultural Trust. I don’t even know what that is, but the plate is a hideous abstract with orange splotches that makes it look like it’s rusting. Did they mean Oregon Cultural Rust? I have to admit, rust on an Oregon plate is appropriate.

Well, my friends, the 50 states have now moved into La-La Land. (Not that I’m objecting; it’s fun to look for these new plates.) Oregon has just the four “specials,” as the license plate collectors call them, plus the standard one you get for no extra fee. Sounds like a lot of plates, doesn’t it?

They have two plates just to commemorate the Challenger disaster, and one that honors both Challenger and Columbia. You can express your allegiance to agriculture, aquaculture, the Red Cross, wildlife conservation (or specifically the manatee, the Florida panther, dolphins, sea turtles, or whales), firefighters, veterans, hospices, the Indian River Lagoon, Olympics, Special Olympics, reefs, seas in general, education, the arts, education again, the Tampa Bay Estuary, Girl Scouts, and the Sportsman’s Natural Land Trust. You can support the Miami Dolphins or Heat, the Tampa Bay Storm, and the Jacksonville Jaguars.

You can express your opposition to breast cancer, kids using drugs, and child abuse. There are two separate plates that urge you to fish, one to share the road with bicycles, one to celebrate life (I’ll come back to that one), one to invest in children (how about I buy a dozen and put them in a safe deposit box until they mature?), one to celebrate “family values.” Lots of celebrating. One lets you point out that Florida is the golf capitol of the world. You can proclaim United We Stand. One plate invites you to imagine. That’s it, just … imagine. (Oh, wait, I see it now! That squiggle in the middle, that’s John Lennon!)

And that’s just the beginning. Like many other states now, Florida lets you show the world where you went to school. Oregon lets you put the mascots of the OSU Beavers, the U of O Ducks, or the Western Oregon University Wolves on your plate. Florida has special plates for 35 colleges. What’s next? High schools? I suspect that if you wanted the Bow-Wow Doggie Obedience College on your plate, Florida could accommodate you.

I’m not really picking on Florida.

Other states have just as many options, and some may even have more. I didn’t examine them all. Illinois has 27 specials, and 47 (at least) for special events, everything from Independence Day to trade conventions to the Superman Celebration to Popeye’s Picnic (I haven’t got a clue) to

Woodridge Hills Gorilla Days (even less of a clue) to Corvette clubs to … no kidding … MAPA, the Mid-America Plate Association—license plate collectors—which looks to have had a special license plate every year since at least 1989.

As in many other states, you can advertise your military service in Illinois. Not only the branch you served in, but the reserves and the national guard. You can proclaim your service in the Korean or Vietnamese Wars, that you are a disabled vet, a Tet Vet, that you won the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, or the Silver Star, or that you are an ex-POW.

Hold on.

There’s more. Indiana and many other states also make plates for social organizations, like the Shriners, the Freemasons, and the Fraternal Order of Police. Maryland even allows you to put out-of-state colleges on their plates, plus individual military units such as the Silent Service (submarines), 167th Airlift Wing, 29th Division Association, and even US Navy Chefs (would you brag about that?), and honors at least 200 organizations. West Virginia has a NASCAR plate, but that’s not enough for Mississippi, which has a NASCAR plate plus 12 NASCAR driver plates that include the names and numbers of Terry LaBonte, Jeff Gordon, the Dale Earnhardts, Sr. and Jr., and others I don’t know. (NASCAR bores me. “Stomp on the gas and turn to the left.” This is athletics?)

Few of the plates are outright political, unless you count God Bless America, In God We Trust, and God Bless Texas (all in violation of the First Amendment, in my opinion) as political.

All of these except the last appear in several states. Virginia, Texas, and Missouri sell plates that say “Fight Terrorism.” And Oklahoma, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama have plates saying “Choose Life,” which is obviously an anti-abortion slogan. (These all have identical designs, which means a lobbying group has been at work, I suspect.) The most overtly political plate I found, other than those four, was one from Virginia that shows the Tibetan flag, for Friends of Tibet. And I forgive them, because they also have a plate for Jimmy Buffet fans: Parrotheads!