Montana Quilters Have Their Own License Plate
The curious rise of specialty tags.
America’s highways are like Walt Whitman: They contain multitudes. America’s twin obsessions—being yourself and driving yourself—have given us the Hummer and the Prius, generational tides of nodding dogs and fuzzy dice, the Gucci edition of the AMC Hornet and those 3-inch by 12-inch windows onto the nebulous depths of our fellow motorists known as bumper stickers. In a culture that celebrates autonomy, self-promotion, and perpetual motion, my car is a song of myself.
Most recently, our penchant for motor-vehicular self-expression has fueled a bumper crop of specialty license plates. Many raise eyebrows—and all raise questions. How did specialty plates get started? Why the recent boom? Who approves the designs? And are they harmless—or yet another symptom of too much pluribus and not enough unum?
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Texas Vehicle Title and Registration Services. -
CREDIT: Eureka Montana Quilt Show. -
Department of Revenue State of Mississippi. -
ALPCA. -
Richard Dragon. -
Maryland department of transportation motor vehicle administration. -
Richard Dragon. -
Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. -
CREDIT: Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration. -
CREDIT: Arizona Department of Transportation. -
CREDIT: ACLU. -
CREDIT: Massachusetts Department of Transportation Registry of Motor Vehicles. -
Stripey the crab via Wikimedia Commons. -
CREDIT: Plain Dealer. -
Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. -
www.ibelievesc.net. -
CREDIT: Arizona Department of Transportation. -
Mark Vanhoenacker. -
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