The other day it finally dawned on me that Washington state vehicle license plates now sport three letters, then four numbers, with no spaces. When did it go from three and three?
I turned to my new best friend Google and looked up the historical progression of our constantly-evolving Washington State license plate designs.
When I was a kid, you used to be able to tell where someone was from in Washington state just by looking at their license plates. The letter “A” began all plates issued to vehicles registered in King County. Pierce County had “B,” Spokane had “C” and Snohomish County, where we lived, started with the letter “D.”
Vanity plates were approved by the legislature in the early 1970s, so in 1988, when I bought a black Taurus with dark-tinted “privacy” windows, I paid a few extra dollars to get “D Vader” printed on the license plate. The car, however, was a real lemon, and I only kept it a couple years. The plate went with it when I traded the car in.
Nowadays, your plate must be reissued every 7 years because the reflective paint allegedly breaks down. To keep the same plate is an extra $20. In Washington we call the yearly stickers “tabs” and in Oregon it’s “tags.” Go figure.
I got so involved with the history of the colors and materials (all aluminum went to the war effort in the early 40s, so only stickers were issued) and so forth and so on that I lost all track of time and several hours flew by.
Yeah, I know, I need to get a life, but if you read this far, I bet you, too, learned something today!