What’s driving you crazy?

Fella, name of Steve Delahoyde, has been having some fun at the expense of us Texans. Seems he is amused by the recent vote on Texas license plates. He has written some giggly stories about us in his online publication “Unbeige”.

Now, that’s ok. He just doesn’t understand.

Frankly, what makes it so puzzling to me is that “Unbeige” is an online design publication . He probably is unaware that we Texans have been suffering for years from Governor Boy George Bush’s war on good design.

You see, when Boy George became governor, this was the basic design of the license plate. It was the most color Texas had had on a plate ever. Most folks thought the flag and “TEXAS” just about said all that needed to be said. The design was simple and striking and did not give bombastic calls to duty (”Live free or die!” - whatever the hell that means) or overt bragging (”The Sunshine State” - except when there’s hurricanes).

Then, came the Sesquicentennial (that’s 150th anniversary) of Texas’ statehood (ignoring that little dustup in 1865). Up until then, the only word on the Texas plate beside “TEXAS” had been “HEMISFAIR” to celebrate the 1968 HemisFair Expo in San Antonio. That’s right, there never had been so much as a “Remember the Alamo!” on Texas plates, just “TEXAS” - ’nuff said.

Well, the folks who make such decisions decided we needed a special Sesquicentennial plate. That’s it on the left. Okay, it was a big deal to many. Personally, I liked the flag better, but you have to make something that will sell on eBay in ten years. We got our special plate with more words on it than ever - “150 YEARS OF STATEHOOD’ (highway department didn’t have to learn how to spell sesquicentennial).

That soon passed and then the design treachery moved into the picture. I should say pictures. The state flag plate was out. The Sesquicentennial Plate was out. The designers under Boy George Bush’s reign came up with this:

What is there to like about this plate? You’ve got a cowboy. OK, Texas has cowboys. You’ve got oil derricks (the kind we have not seen for decades); Texas has oil. You have the space shuttle. Uh? Ok, “Houston,…” aka the Johnson Space Center is in Texas - but the shuttle isn’t. It’s like on any given day you’d see a cowboy riding along by antique oil rigs with the shuttle overhead.

Are those mountains in the left lower corner or fire ant mounds?

It was so ugly! I think it was designed that way on purpose to drive people to buy the state’s many and varied (and much more expensive) vanity and specialty plates. Seriously, I can see them saying - “Give them this and they won’t hesitate a New York minute to pony up cash for different design”(chuckles and laughter fill the meeting room).

I seriously was saddened when my flag plate had to go and was replaced by the ludicrous, new design. They say it was the first three-color design (I guess what looked like red, blue and black on previous designs was just red and blue).

It was just dumb!

That was what passed for design in 2000 in Texas. You ask why Texans were so eager to vote on a new license plate?

They did try to sneak the old design into the competition (yep, Boy George’s successor Rick “Good Hair” Perry is another GOP design moron -not saying all of the GOP are design morons, we just seem to pick them here). To save it, they stuck an American flag on the shuttle (that’s not there in real life) and stylized the state outline as a state flag. It still was ugly. It got the fewest votes. I think the designer and his or her family must have burned out several computers getting it the votes it did garner.

It was just dumber!

This is what won (yep, folks did turn down a simpler design and my choice*). It’s fairly simple and straight forward, with an homage to the flag in upper left hand corner. The state outline is a stylized flag.

At the base, are the wonderful mountains (not rolling hills) of West Texas. To be there is fantastic as you are wrapped up in the amazing grandeur and wonder, driving from a desert floor to an alpine range in about an hour’s time. It is inspirational.

It’s change for the better and another step along the way to our recovery from Boy George’s days.

However, the concern that many truck owners had that “TRUCK” would not be on the new plate shows we have a long way to go, alas.

Images of license plates from

License Plates of the World

Texas Department of Transporation (the highway department)