#59 Famous Potatoes

I’m driving along the other day, and I chance to find myself behind a car from one of our neighboring states. It’s a state that I know to be fabulously blessed with stunning, soaring mountain vistas, winding rivers with surging rapids, heart-stoppingly beautiful canyons and mountain lakes crisp and clean as a—well—as a mountain lake. Their license plate? It said “Famous Potatoes.” How a-peeling. Sure can tell the environmentalists aren’t in control of the legislature in Idaho.
Now I know we wouldn’t want the people in charge of actually making the license plates be in charge of the sayings on em. “Arizona, Oldest Territorial Prison” or “New York, Remember Attica” would probably be tough to sport on the back of your Lexus, but who does control what it says on the license plate in any given state? Some of them sure read like slogans from the State Chambers of Commerce. A state’s major scenic items don’t ever seem to get past second base, much less make it to the plate. Oh there are occasional glimmers of hope. Here in Washington we do have “Evergreen State,” somehow or another Boeing State or Bill Gate’s Backyard fell off the list. And North Dakota has “Peace Garden State.” Not bad for a flat expanse of nothingness. At least they tried. Wyoming’s plate has no slogan at all. Pretty sad. But I guess it’s better than “Wyoming: Empty of all Hope.”
But, like Idaho, there are lots of agricultural product state license plates. Wisconsin is “America’s Dairyland.” I’ll be sure to bring my gas mask. Georgia is “The Peach State.” Hmm, and I heard it was the pits. Kansas is “The Wheat State.” Iowa is “The Corn State.” All the major grains being taken, Nebraska elected to be “The Cornhusker State.” There’s an time-honored and economically elite financial base to aspire too. Cornhusking. How about Nebraska, “Poised on the Precipice of Economic Doom”?
Some of the Eastern states take a different tack. They use their license plates to badger people. Maryland cautions “Drive Carefully.” North Carolina nags “Drive Safely.” Ohio asks “Seat Belts Fastened?” I don’t know about you, but if every car I drove behind in the course of a day asked me if my seat belts were fastened it would literally drive me crazy.
California goes for generalities. It’s “The Golden State.” Nevada for specifics. It’s “The Silver State.” New Jersey simply begs the question. It says it’s “The Garden State.” Garden of Pollution? Garden of Landfills? Garden of Toxic Death? South Carolina, land of Peanuts and Tobacco, calls itself “The Iodine State.” Gee, too bad North Carolina isn’t the “scratched my knee” state. One state just seems to be begging. Oklahoma implores, “Visit.” Please.
Only one state comes closest to saying what it really means: Arkansas, “Opportunity Land.” As in, Arkansas: Lower Business Taxes.
America, ya gotta love it.