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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, June 19, 2000
New Texas tags are a millennial embarrassment
Enough merriment and tomfoolery. Eighty-six the whoopee cushions. Set aside those pigs' bladders. Are you up for grappling with a serious issue today?
Specifically, are you ready to talk . . . license plates?
Now, granted, license plates may not be the sort of thing you give a great deal of thought. You know you've got to have 'em - one in back, one up front (though I note with alarm that a growing number of scofflaws are replacing their front plates with "customized" plates announcing their support of a pro football franchise or their personal philosophy, e.g.: "Born to Raise Anxiety Levels") - and you know they give you a chance to get acquainted with your county government. You can wimp out and pick up your plates (or stickers) at the supermarket, or you can be a mensch and camp out at the courthouse.
The main thing, of course, is that you've got to have plates if you don't want to attract the unwelcome attention of the constabulary. True, one erstwhile staffer here drove around for years on expired Kentucky tags - but unless you're a seriously wild child, you just queue up dutifully like the rest of us.
So? So this: Have you taken a look at the Texas' New! Improved! Folkloric! license plates?
Me, I blame it all on the millennium. Somebody up there in Austin evidently concluded it wouldn't do to usher in the new era with a regular ol' license plate. Nossir: It was decreed that Texans would have a license plate worthy of the millennium.
And look at what we got.
Those of you whose number has already come up know all too well. The rest of us, wending our way along the expressways and negotiating shopping-mall parking lots have almost certainly laid eyes on these . . . these . . . plates.
And aren't they special?
Lessee: You've got a sort of blue border arrangement framing the things, right? And all sorts of stuff going on: In the upper left corner, you got your space shuttle; in the upper right you got your crescent moon; down at the bottom you got a silhouette of a cowpoke and his horsie, and an oil rig, and some sort of nondescript foliage (palms? mesquites? Who knows?) Oh, and of course, you got your "Lone Star State" motto nice and big. That, one surmises, is supposed to drive the point home to the outlanders.
I'm sure there are plenty of you who are not at all disturbed by any of this. Indeed, there are probably Texans who are just tickled pink by the new look.
But not this Texan.
My apologies to those of you already familiar with my rantings on this issue, but I feel I owe an explanation to the recently arrived.
Here's the thing: I have long been a lonely (and, yes, tiresome) minimalist when it comes to our fair state's license plates. Other states may do as they wish: Some of them appear to be ever so slightly desperate to establish some kind of identity - any kind of identity. That has led to some bizarre flights of fancy. Remember those "Wander Indiana" plates? Indiana is a perfectly fine state, salt of the earth and all that, but wander Indiana? Does a good, solid businesslike state like Indiana really want to have a whole lot of people wandering around, distracted and unfocused?
Or how about New Hampshire's celebrated and occasionally controversial "Live Free or Die?" (Contrary to some reports, "Live Free or I'll Kill You" was never seriously considered.) Offhand, I can only think of one license-plate slogan that really works: Idaho's "Famous Potatoes." Now, that's poetry.
But Texas, dang it, is Texas, and nothing else is. What more need we say?
I know, I'm swimming against the tide. No doubt more, and worse, lies ahead.
Just around the corner, I fear, we will find ourselves confronted by Warm Contemporary Earth Tones and Happy Faces. Can the Martha Stewart Lone Star License Boutique be far behind?
(Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772 or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com.)
Brooks Peterson
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