This car tag discussion has me thinking

“If an expired license plate means another decoration for your living room wall … you might be a redneck.”

—Jeff Foxworthy, comedian, actor, author, writer and member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

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“I’m going to the courthouse to get new tags for the car,” I remember my grandfather saying as he tapped his pipe on the ashtray, dislodging remains of Prince Albert tobacco.

“You want to go with me.”

That was a no-brainer. It meant he would let me drive as soon as we got out of sight of the house. I was still a couple of years short of the required license age of 14. But my grandfather saw no harm in teaching a youngster how to drive with behind-the-wheel instruction on the way to the hardware store, the gas station, or the courthouse.

My grandmother, on the other hand, was adamantly opposed. “Take him out to the pasture where I learned how to drive,” she reprimanded him.

I loved my grandmother, but that declaration always puzzled me. They lived in town. There was no pasture. My grandmother was also a wise woman. So maybe there was a message in there somewhere.

Going to the courthouse to get new tags, as license plates used to be characterized, was once a springtime ritual in Texas when every car and truck license expired on the same date. Lines were long at the license office on that last day.

Like many back then, my grandfather hung expired tags on the wall of his garage. I don’t have expired plates on my living room wall … yet. But I do have a wall of them in my garage. A 40-year collection spanning a brand new, still wrapped in paper from the courthouse, set of 1929 plates up to a few personalized plates from the ‘70s and ’80s. About the time my interest in cars and plates begins to wane.

A look at the history of the often-ignored license plate is intriguing. Texas first required registering motor vehicles in 1907. Car owners made their own license plates in the beginning, most often by attaching metal numbers to a piece of wood using a “serial number” assigned to them by the county. That remained the norm until 1917, when the state began issuing metal license plates.

In 1933, the legislature approved the manufacturing of license plates in the Huntsville prison, and the first ones produced there were in 1935.

Early license tags came in a variety of colors before the state began alternating black and orange plates every other year during and after World War II. In 1957, the alternating colors were changed to white with black letters and black with white letters. That was the style in the early 1960s when I began driving.

“How do I get plates like those black and white ones,” I asked while in the courthouse a few weeks ago to renew the registration on my Tahoe. I noticed the new plates when they were offered as personalized or “vanity” plates a few years ago because they reminded me of the plates on my 1965 Chevelle Malibu SS I bought that year.

I bought my first vanity plates in the 1970s. Texas initially offered them in the 60s. Mine read “CAMEO.” Looked great on the first vehicle restoration I attempted, a 1956 Chevrolet “Cameo Carrier” pickup. 

Regular issue plates in the ‘70s were white with different color letters every year. Several ho-hum variations followed until the late 90s. That’s when Texas issued what was, in my opinion, the ugliest license plate ever conceived. Supposedly symbolizing all things Texas, they were adorned with a space shuttle, an oil derrick, a cowboy, and I forget what else. Mostly because I’ve been trying hard to forget about them.

Thankfully, in 2012, white plates with black letters replaced them. And they remain the standard. Probably will for a while, as the Department of Motor Vehicles reported recently, they have no plans to change the design anytime soon. Likely because the plethora of custom plates at an extra $99 a pop has become good revenue for the state.

All of this contemplation of car tags last week reminded me that misuse of license plates can come with consequences. A reminder of a long-ago moment of temporary insanity when visions of making license plates loomed large as an addition to my resume.

That was the summer between college semesters spent working in my uncle’s body shop in California. Amazing as it may seem, money intended for college funds found its way into purchasing a Southern California hot rod Ford Model A with a hopped-up DeSoto Hemi motor.

I thought it was college related. A guy needed a cool car for school.

Needing to drive the yet unregistered car to the shop for a paint job one night, borrowing the front plate off my friend’s ’57 Chevy seemed like a reasonable solution. MPHS classmate Ronnie Lilly made the summer trek out west with me, and between my car and his, we decided his would come closer to making the trip than mine.

My plan began to unravel when on the way to the paint shop, one of Canoga Park, California’s finest, decided he needed a closer inspection of what I was driving. And he was about to buy my story about driving the car from Texas. too. Until Ronnie, who had gotten a late start, passed us and pulled over to see what was happening.

The jig was up when the officer noticed the car stopping to join us had a matching plate to the one on my hot rod. To his credit, he lightheartedly gave me an A for effort. Delivered with an expensive ticket.

So now, all of this talk about tags has me thinking. Jeff Foxworthy’s humor notwithstanding, I’m thinking some of those old Texas plates might look pretty good on the living room wall at my house.

Right next to the Studebaker grille and the Mobil gas sign.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these Texas newspapers: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, The Fort Stockton Pioneer, and The Monitor in Naples.

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