The Fine Art of License Plates

Last week I wrote about picturesque state flags.  My husband suggested a blog about license plates.

Plates have come a long way since this typical 1960s example:

Well, EXCEPT for Virginia.  Here's their current plate:

Plates are free billboards to advertise the magical bounty of a state. I'm pretty sure Virginia has history and beauty that should be on their plate. Even if they don't, they could at the very least follow Montana's example of putting their state outline for all to see (dull as it is):

Or they could do as New York and a few others do: add a teeny tiny outline of their state. Well, maybe not. That messy inkblot would never inspire a person to say, "Hey I absolutely must visit New York!"

Now for the best plates.  Hard choices . . . out of 50 state plates I would say over half of them are scenic tableaus that attractively encourage us to visit their state.

easy on the eyes, dreamy beautiful colors

you can count on Wyoming for a dynamic plate--they've featured the cowboy on his spirited bronc since time began

a little busy with the 50th seal, but towering snow-clad mountains and long-light days says: Alaska!

two colors, one graphic--Rhode Island's perky plate lets us know it is all about the sea

one of the famed arches of Southern Utah--plates never lie--Utah is a spectacular stunning state

you can almost inhale the freshness of Maine's fragrant pine forests and sweet meadows

as with their state flag, New Mexico has gone simple . . . and effective

Here's two plates with a little history:

New Hampshire's famous symbol, The Old Man of the Mountain, appears on its state quarter, license plate, route signs, etc. The mountain collapsed suddenly in 2003, devastating the folks of NH. It would be like Utah's arches crashing down, or Maine's forests burning up.

And, Oregon, My Oregon:

Not a bad plate, now. When it first came out 20-some years ago you could have heard the outcry from the bottom of Hell's Canyon.* The tree was a languid lime green, the mountains were a pale lavender-gray, and the sky was a smoggy brown.  Brown sky??  Yeah. The state didn't react fast enough to the criticism, and people took the law--and colored sharpies--into their own hands to brighten and true up the colors. The state fixed the palette. We're sort of happy with it now.

*a spectacular mile-deep canyon in NE Oregon

When Smokers Ruled the Earth

How refreshing it is to go into a store or theatre or place of business and not have to hold your breath for the duration of the visit! In restaurants you don't even have to choose anymore, between smoking and non-smoking, fumer or non-fumer. It's a brave new world out there, and I for one am grateful beyond belief. I paid my dues in discomfort, illness, and suffering over decades of breathing second-hand smoke.

Both my parents smoked, and both paid a high price for the privilege, eventually. Mom picked up smoking when she was working in New York City in the late 40s. Her Mom smoked, and her Dad smoked a pipe. If you watch a movie from that era, you'll notice that pretty much everyone inhaled. Dad never smoked until his WW2 Navy years, when cigarettes were distributed to the enlisted for free. On board ship all but a few partook.

I absolutely despised smoking, but was stuck with it in my own house. It was like the unfortunate folks victimized by a coke plant or steel mill going up right next door--it wasn't going away, but since it was home, it became an integral unpleasant part of life. I despised the smell, the smoke, the filthy ashtrays, and the other connected dangers. It was common for the still-burning butts to be thrown on the ground and more than once I stepped on a hot one in my bare feet. When I went away to college at BYU, with not a smoker for miles, I couldn't figure out why the smell of cigarettes permeated my student apartment. Then I realized it was my clothes. Holy mortification!!  Being deeply immersed in cigarette smoke for my whole life, I never knew that my clothes reeked all the time.

Zero rules against smoking existed, so children and other non-smokers were subjected to second-hand smoke everywhere. You ate in a restaurant, you breathed cigarette smoke. You went grocery shopping, you breathed smoke. You wanted to enjoy the beach or movie theatre, you breathed in smoke. And you flew on an airplane, you breathed smoke. Yeah. I don't know when it happened, but smoking sections were created in closed spaces such as theatres and airplanes. Can you guess how effective that was? Smokers might be confined to the last 5 rows, but the air was shared by all.

My folks smoked enough that the cigarette coupons they collected from the back of each package could be redeemed for some good stuff. There was a "cigarette coupon redemption center" somewhere nearby--I vaguely remember going there. My folks gave me a guitar for my birthday and guess how they paid for it?  In cigarette coupons of course. Mom told me never to reveal that fact, but I just did.

About the time I got into high school I grew bolder dealing with smoking. At high school football games my friends and I vocally denounced the smokers in the stands who were polluting the air. They called us rude teenagers. My brother and I began calling cigarettes "cancer sticks" to my folks' faces. They didn't react. Guess they thought it was a passing phase. In my first year of college my Mom hired me to clean house for her weekly. I told her I would make the house spic and span, but I wasn't touching ashtrays, and if I found packs of cigarettes around they were going in the garbage. So, she took care of the ashtrays and my folks began hiding their cigs.

The second-hand smoke damaged my health. I was prone to exercise-induced asthma already, and breathing in three packs of cigs a day didn't help. As a child I couldn't run around the block without gasping for breath. But for my folks it was life and death. On New Years' Eve 1980 my Dad had a heart attack. We rushed him to the hospital emergency room. The first thing they asked him was, "George, do you smoke?" "I used to," he said. "When did you quit,?" the doc asked. Dad's reply: "About 30 minutes ago." And he never smoked again and lived 25 more years. Mom wasn't so lucky. I remember when Daniel was about five years old he said to his Grandma, "Grandma, you shouldn't smoke." She told him he was absolutely right. But she kept on, and died of a heart attack at age 67.

So, why does anyone smoke? They get polluted air, filth, danger of fire, life-threatening illnesses. It's a mystery to me why that appeals to anyone. And now, my favorite Far Side cartoon ever:

The Low of Air Travel: 1970s

If you ever find yourself cursing the rudeness of modern air travel and yearn for the glory days when the passenger was king and the flying experience included pampering and fine dining, check that thought.  Strangely coexistent with the pampering was an insane, crazy wild-west aspect to air travel in the 70s.  And unbelievable as it is, I am not making this up!

I'm speaking about skyjacking / hijacking and y'all know what that is.  Rare now thanks to the strictest ever security measures, skyjacking was routine in the 70s.  When a mayhem-intentioned person gets past security measures now, pro-active passengers become their own security force and take care of business.  The reaction to skyjacking fear has become so extreme that if a person even unwittingly breathes the word "bomb" anywhere near an airport, or a unhinged person breaches security, look out.  The latter happened in November 2001 when our daughter was flying home from Salt Lake for her wedding.  The security breach happened elsewhere--I think in Atlanta--but it caused a chain-reaction of seriously delayed flights and frazzled passengers all over the country.  Amazingly, in the 60s and 70s, airlines refused to institute inconvenient airport security measures for fear passengers would not tolerate that, and would take the train instead . . .

Some skyjacking incidents lasted days, and on occasion passengers were executed, planes were bombed and at the very least, passengers flying to weddings, funerals, business meetings, vacations, had their plans, and sometimes their psyches, ruined.  Wikipedia says:

Between 1948 and 1957, there were 15 hijackings worldwide, an average of a little more than one per year. Between 1958 and 1967, this climbed to 48, or about five per year.   [There were] 38 in 1968, but grew to 82 in 1969, the largest number in a single year in the history of civil aviation; in January 1969 alone, eight airliners were hijacked to Cuba.^[5] Between 1968 and 1977, the annual average jumped to 41.

Given that millions and millions fewer miles were flown, and millions fewer passengers were in the air, a flier's odds of being involved in a hijacking were not miniscule.

In the late 60s / early 70s the average situation involved goofy people who wanted a free flight to the Communist utopia--Cuba.  They renounced the corrupt USA . . . yeah. . . . only to spend years in icky Cuban jails or at hard labor on sugar cane plantations.  Skyjacking became regular enough that airlines offered free flights to Havana to prevent the terror and disruption of "unscheduled" flights to Cuba. Flights to Algeria were another popular itinerary.  Some of those perps were welcomed and indulged by the Algerian government, a figurative "flipping off" the US of A.  More than one idealistic hijacker did the deed in order to free Angela Davis.  If you don't know who she is, look her up on Google.

D.B. Cooper started a new trend in 1971.  Give me money and give me parachutes.   At least 9 copy-cats followed in the next year--no idealism present, just more people asking for cash and parachutes.  Airlines were ill-prepared to come up with millions of dollars at a moment's notice.  A few times an airline took out a loan for buckets of cash from a local bank.

Skyjacking took a sinister turn when baddies realized they had a negotiating tool at their disposal--hostages.  Peril to passengers and crew replaced the inconvenience of an unscheduled stop in Cuba.  Planes were taken for political purposes, either to draw attention to a cause or to be used as a tool in demands for release of political prisoners.  Passengers were the pawns and plenty lost their lives at the hands of jittery cold-blooded skyjackers.

Hijacking became a family affair when in 1978 a teenage girl skyjacked a plane in order to free a man from prison; that same man had been imprisoned in 1972 when he  had hijacked a plane.  The girl's mother had hijacked a helicopter to free that man and was killed in the attempt.  Follow the logic in that one.

Just think: if this historic scenario occurred now, airline travel would die a slow death from passenger outrage and boycotts.  So, next time you fly, and you board believing with certainty that you will reach your destination, remember the wacky wild times in air travel of yore, and be glad you're flying now.

A Bit of Grog, or How Mr. Sean Evans, Garage Man, Took Me on a Wild Goose Chase

the Atlantic Coast near Dingle, County Kerry Ireland

Curses on Budget rental cars. I'm like the battered victim who keeps coming back for more. In this case, I have rented and re-rented cars from Budget. Why? Because they're within my budget, ha. I already covered the East Coast Adventure involving a Budget disaster. And now, my international debacle.

In 1990 I landed at Shannon Airport in Ireland; my husband Craig would follow in a few days for a week of sight-seeing together. It's unnerving to step off a long international flight at 7 a.m. local time when your body tells you it's midnight-and-time-to-turn-in, then pick up a rental car to head out for a 3 hour drive to your ancestor's domicile: Dingle, County Kerry. Oh yeah, and you are driving on the "wrong" side of the road for the first time in your life!  That's a biggie.

My crystal ball smartly announced there was a potential serious problem in my future when the Budget counter handed me a bent key for the automatic compact car I had reserved. Yeah, the key was bent like a willow leaning from the wind. My mind's eye visualized me out on the remote Dingle Peninsula and not being able to get the key out of the ignition, or in, for that matter. I asked for a different key and the clerk informed me that was the only key for that car.  Really? You don't make copies of your keys?  Mmmm, who doesn't keep a spare car key? He insisted there was no other key, so I requested a different car. The only other cars were manuals, and I decided it wouldn't be smart to be managing a manual transmission when I was going to be driving on the "wrong" side for the first time. I took the automatic with the defective key. Bad choice.

The car was fine for 4 days as I jaunted around the Dingle Peninsula researching my Irish ancestors. On the 5th day, just before my zip up to Shannon Airport to pick up Craig, I stopped at a cemetery in Anascaul to look for O'Donnell gravestones. For some dumb reason I locked the car. Sheesh, I was out in the countryside a mile from civilization . . .  and I locked the car. After a soaking in a short squall, I went to unlock the car and, the key broke off in the door lock . . .

I hoofed the mile into Anascaul, the nearest town, ducked into a pub to ask for advice, and was told the only "garage-man" in town was across the way, Mr. Sean Evans. When he answered the door he told me was "just havin' me a bit of grog" and would be out in 15 minutes. The "havin' me a bit of grog" part was a red flag, but I had no choice but to engage him in solving my problem.

the emerald countryside near Annascaul

Long story short, grizzled Mr. Sean Evans thought by driving me back into Dingle town to the locksmith we could get the key fixed. It was then I realized he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Apparently the locksmith already knew that--he declined to get involved any further than explaining the obvious to Evans: it's impossible to make a new key from 2 bent and broken pieces, even if he could get the piece out of the lock.

Dingle Harbor with St. Mary's Catholic Church in the background

After a couple of wasted hours w/ this not-too-bright and slightly tipsy garage man, we stopped at Mr. Sean Moran's garage in Dingle town where I explained our situation. And Mr. Sean Moran took charge. Over the phone he berated Budget in Shannon for sending me out with a defective key, and then handed the phone to me. I told them that when my husband landed that evening he was to be given a new rental car at no charge. Furthermore, their defective rental was sitting out in front of the Anascaul Catholic Cemetery, locked with the broken stub of the key in the car door (!), and they were welcome to come and get it at their convenience. And that is what happened. Craig was paged in the airport, received a new rental car, and met up with me the next day. We had a marvelous week together meeting my relatives and touring this most scenic spot in Ireland. We even took the St. Mary's Catholic Parish clerk (Padraig Lynch) on our day trip to Ballyferriter. He showed us amazing stuff that isn't in the tourist books. And as we passed Anascaul Cemetery on our way to the airport, Budget's troublesome car was gone. All turned out well!

Ballyferriter is the westernmost point in Ireland, and in Europe; if you venture any further west you're in a boat on your way to America!

An East Coast Adventure, or My 2 Days As a Fugitive From the Law

For Craig's sabbatical in 1990 we planned a month-long vacation traveling a loop in the East, beginning and ending in South Carolina.  My children and I flew to Columbia SC to start our big adventure; Craig would join us later in New England.

We picked up a Budget rent-a-mini-van and headed north, stopping in Virginia for the night. It was there in Virginia that I noticed there were no license plates on the car. Not in front, not in back. Mmmm, they do things different here. I didn't worry much; if the rental company left the plates off their vehicle it must be ok, right? Not my problem . . .

We spent several days at my Baba's in Pennsylvania, then continued on around the northeast through six more states. I recall passing several Massachusetts state troopers who didn't seem to care about my vehicle sans plates. But in Vermont, they cared.  I hadn't been in the state 15 minutes before being pulled over in Brattleboro, the home of my Irish immigrant ancestors. In fact, I was pulled over just down the street from where my Sullivans and Toomeys used to live.

Elliot Street in Brattleboro; my gr-grandmother was born at the end of the street (out of view)

Ms. Policewoman brought to my attention the missing plates and asked for the registration.  Surprise!  Another Budget blooper--the glove compartment was empty. I offered her the only document I had: the rental agreement. It was against the law to drive without plates or registration, duh, and she could take the car from me right then, yikes. But she peeked inside the car, saw 4 wide-eyed children with all our junk, and said she wouldn't do that. The deal was, she would meet me at my hotel to write a citation (and I made sure it was going to be to the rental company), then I was not allowed to drive the car except to go to a Budget  rental-car location for a switch the next day.

The nearest Budget was in Greenfield Mass. an hour away, but I could visit my cousin Maureen in her Catholic convent in West Springfield on the same trip, so no harm done. Turned out the Greenfield office was closed that day, a Saturday. At Maureen's convent I spent a good 45 minutes on their phone attempting to find an nearby Budget office that was open. The closest one was down at Hartford/Springfield (BDL) airport in Connecticut. My research time in Vermont was going to be sucked up fixing this stupid rental car mess. But wait, I was going to pick up Craig at BDL in a couple of days anyway. My choice then, was to live as a fugitive from the law for the next few days, because I darn well wasn't going to squander my vacation making 2 trips down to BDL.

So back to Brattleboro we went. I cautiously stayed within the speed limit on back roads to get there. I parked in obscure spots hidden from the road. While I transcribed gravestones at the cemetery the car was secreted behind shrubs. Not a good feeling, to know I was disobeying a cop, especially one who gave me a break, but the whole thing was a dumb error on Budget's part, not mine.

UGH

2 days later at BDL I told Budget they could have their illegal vehicle back and replace it with an identical one at the same rate. And they could have the ticket too. They whined and fussed, but in the end gave me what I wanted, and the ordeal was over. My life as a fugitive from the law had ended, and all was well. This was not the last time I was to have a negative experience with a Budget rental car, and that will be a story for another day.

A Horrible Crime in My Childhood Neighborhood

me on the front lawn of our brand new house, 1968

I don't make a habit of living in sketchy high-crime neighborhoods. Yet twice in my life I have lived just around the corner from a scene of triple-murder. Yeah. The first of them was random--that was mighty scary. The second was a family deliberately targeted, so we had no fear for our personal selves that day. Both times the murders occurred in orderly nice neighborhoods full of children and families and people who went to work every day.

I wrote about the second murder here, here, and here. And now the first:

This one occurred on November 29, 1972 during my freshman year of college when I attended nearby College of the Canyons in Valencia California. My family lived in a planned community with a variety of homes among parks, a shopping area, and a clubhouse with pool and tennis courts, all of which were within walking distance on paseos (very wide curvy sidewalks that were not cut by streets).

The day of the murder I finished my morning classes about 10:50 a.m. My friend Emily was riding with me in my Mom's forest green Dodge Dart sedan, which I had borrowed for the day. We drove down Rotella St. near our houses at 11:10. I vividly remember looking at the clock. After dropping Emily I went home to my empty house through the unlocked front door--we never locked our doors during daytime.

I hadn't been home but 5 or 10 minutes when my Mom called from her work at Sierra Vista Junior High out in Saugus. She was frantic, and instructed me to lock the doors and stay inside until I heard from her again. There had been a murder in the neighborhood and the suspect was at large. Yikes.

That morning Mrs. G, who lived on Rotella, had invited a neighbor's son to play with her 3-year-old son. She and the 2 boys were out on her driveway when a young Black man--Robert Grigsby, age 17--pursued them into her house, grabbed a knife from Mrs. G's kitchen, chased the three into the back bedroom and slew them all. About that time Mrs. K, mother of the other boy, came down to find out why Mrs. G was not answering her phone, and walked in on the murder scene. Mrs. K was slashed by Grigsby, who then took off.

from my 1972 high school yearbook

The police were called and then the word swept to every corner of the Santa Clarita Valley. As mentioned above, I drove past Mrs. G's house on Rotella at 11:10, the exact time later determined that the murders occurred. I probably got home at 11:15, and by 11:25 my Mom was calling me from her work eight miles away to tell me of the murders. The word of the crime spread that fast. Our area was still partly rural, not heavily populated, and it seemed we knew everyone else, or at least knew of them, so one phone call became 10, and 10 became a hundred, and so on.

My friend Emily also got a call from her Mom. Emily called me to say she was too afraid to stay home alone and wanted to run to my house. I implored her to stay home with the doors locked but she was willing to risk being out and about with a murderer on the loose, rather than be home alone. She made it over. I recall that by noon, less than an hour since the murder, Mom called to say the perp had been caught down by the river, a few blocks north of our house.

The perp was, is, mentally ill and had exhibited alarming aggressive behavior previously. His brother was well-known at my high school, but I had not known this kid--perhaps he wasn't a regular attender. There's plenty of unanswered questions about that dreadful day, and virtually zero about it on the internet. I don't even know if he's still incarcerated but can hope that he never sees the light of day.

It has always creeped me out that our house was unlocked. If Grigsby had walked a few more blocks and seen me go into my house, he could have come in after me. Or he might have been waiting for me inside . . . I did not know the victims personally, yet will always remember them as innocents whose paths tragically crossed with a psychopath. 

2022 UPDATE

A Productive Morning

I like getting free stuff as much as the next person, and I don't mind doing hard labor for it either.  On a recent morning I returned home from exercising to find my across-the-street neighbor outside with a local tree service.  They were about to remove a couple of 30-year-old trees from his yard.  He is re-landscaping his front jungle---oops, I mean yard . . . (hallelujah!) (finally!) (sound the trump!)

Naturally my antenna shot up and I casually--well, I hope I sounded casual and didn't betray the greed I felt just thinking about free firewood--asked what he planned to do with the wood.  He didn't want it!  Next question: had he promised it to the tree service as part of the contract?   Nein!  No!   Could I have it?   Sure . . .

Then the clear-cutting began, and Mr. Oblivious-to-Free-Stuff mentioned to the dudes that I would take the wood.   They kindly offered to cut it into wood-stove length--wow, did that ever sweeten the deal!   I hunted down our wheelbarrow and got to work before anyone changed his mind.

me and my free wood . . .

The downside of the deal was that the trees were located a little down the hill from us and the tree service set up shop down the hill (where they chipped up the smaller branches), so every single load had to be wheeled a bit uphill to my house, then up my steep driveway, and across my front yard and through the gate to the wood pile.  The trunk sections were huge and heavy, the branch pieces easier to handle, and I made each load a mix of the two.   After 4 or 5 loads Daniel came out to help, and after another 5 or 6 loads we had it all stacked.  It was an exhausting hour and a half but I'm sure once it's split it will be a winter's worth of fuel!

my free unsplit wood piled wherever there was space

On a related note we had a typhoon the last weekend of September, and my behind-neighbor's giant ash tree keeled over, breaking her fence and smashing another neighbor's shed.  I see more free firewood in my future!