License Plates.

My family used to drive a lot. We regularly drove to Arizona about once every other month and we also drove up to Oregon and to Niagara Falls, Canada. During these trips, I used to play a game with my sisters where if you saw an out of state license plate, you had to identify it and then you got to punch whoever you were playing with in the arm. I was probably responsible for coming up with this game, mainly because it involved punching. It was basically our version of Slug Bug, which we also played, just not as often (I guess it's more commonly known as "Punch Buggy"). After awhile, we actually got really good at identifying plates, and it could get a little scary, because we even knew older plates to most of the states.

So, a couple of days ago, I found this license plate website that has pictures of license plates from each state. I was trolling through the site and it brought me back to the '80s and early '90s when we did most of our traveling.

I'm only 33, but I think I have owned a car with every California license plate going back to the black version in the '60s. When my Grandfather died, we found his license plate collection in the garage, and he had plates going back to the '30s. You can click on history to see earlier ones, and specifically remember seeing some of those much older California plates that he had.