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Any Republican candidate for governor could assure himself of at least 45 percent of the vote merely by announcing that he will let us keep our old two-letter license plates. If he promised to restore that system and eliminate those new-fangled Californicated three-letter three-digit abominations, he'd win by a landslide.
License plates are a serious matter in Colorado. I have no idea why this is so -- friends in other states advise me that nobody elsewhere considers license plates anything more than a nuisance -- but I am about as guilty of this lunacy as anybody else.
When I moved to the mountains in 1974, I couldn't wait to replace the non-descript MN tags on my 1961 Ford van with some distinctive Grand County ZB license plates.
If your plate started with Z, it meant that you were a real Coloradan because you lived in a small mountain county: ZA was Custer County, ZB Grand, ZD Park, and so on to the smallest county in Colorado, Hinsdale with its ZN plates.
ZP, ZR and ZT (there was no ZO or ZQ because Colorado
does not use O
and Q,
apparently because they
might be confused with zero) indicated latecomers to
booming Pitkin and Summit counties, and I suspect people
drove such cars (usually late-model Volvos) with a bit of
embarrassment.
Inside the county, the low license-plate number was the ultimate status symbol. It meant that you had been there a long time, and that you had good connections with the county clerk who issued the tags. Chancy Van Pelt, renowned former sheriff, drove ZB-1 in Grand County; Cully Culbreath (the Culbreaths had been there since the Utes roamed) sported ZL-1 in Summit County.
Neither man was in any way ostentatious about this supreme honor, though. They didn't need to be. You were awed the moment you saw the plate.
After I had been in Grand County a few years, and owned a house and a newspaper, the county clerk decided I was worthy, and set aside a low number for me, ZB-139. But I didn't renew in time, and she gave the coveted number to my courthouse reporter; I was heartbroken when I got stuck with plain old ZB-3334.
Even the plains counties were not immune. By tradition, the first three Weld County plates, HY-1, HY-2 and HY-3 went to the county commissioners. So long as the entire county government remained in Republican hands, this arrangement was as constant and steadfast as the feedlot aromas.
But then a Democrat got elected as county clerk, and the Democrat announced that the coveted low numbers would henceforth be issued with a drawing. A county commissioner protested with what had to be the lamest argument in American political history: Some degenerate might win HY-1, and then park outside a tavern or other establishment of low repute. Passersby would assume that prestigious tag still belonged to a county commissioner, and thus people would lose respect for their county government.
Every time I get new stickers for my ten-year-old plates now, the courthouse clerk asks if I want new plates. I don't. The XJ-2555 on my car means something that FBC-824 never will.
But our state Department of Revenue says many old plates
are hard to read. I examined the plates on my battered
pickup. I think they're supposed to say XH-3863,
but
with all the honorable scars, the number could be
XH-8888
or XH-3688
or many other
combinations.
There probably are good reasons for license plates to be legible, although on a personal level, I'd prefer that mine confuse any watching eyes of law enforcement. If we need new plates, though, why not just give us our same old comfortable numbers? They make license plates in prison, our prison population keeps growing, and they're always looking for something to keep the prisoners busy.
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