Free License Plate Search

It probably has something to so with that mathematician side of me, but probably since I could count, I have been counting license plates and Christmas lights. Just something to pass the boredom of being in a car, for sure, but it has also gotten me to think about many things along my many mundane journeys.  As a kid on the road from Ohio, I used to note with glee that no matter where my family traveled in this country, or Canada for that matter, where ever we stopped, there would be at least one other car visiting from Ohio, and usually several. My rough seat-of-the-pants observations also noted that it was rare to see equal representation from all other 48 states. (I didn't expect to see many plates from Hawaii or Alaska, they were just too far away to be practical.) I especially compared counts to my state neighbors: Indiana and Kentucky. It seemed that no matter where I went, people from Ohio really liked to travel more than folks from other states.  Now, some of this I attribute to affluence. Back then, the US auto industries were an industrial powerhouse and Ohio was a great place to live and work as part of that industry. By the time I left Ohio in 1975, the auto industry was beginning to close plants and lay off workers back home. A recession and foreign competition were beginning to take their toll. That trend never reversed, only lessened from time to time. The Ohio I knew thirty years ago of steel mills and auto body plants is long gone. Those beautiful factories are crumbling or empty lots. And when I travel, I don't see quite the proportion of Ohio plates that I once noted in our National Parks and other tourist locations.  So Christmas lights. Well, I stopped counting Christmas lights years ago. Not because I got bored of counting, but because over-the-top decorating has gotten so prevalent that it would be easier to count houses that couldn't be spotted from space on a dark and cloudy night than those that could. But then, during my annual trek to Ohio, I noticed something quite different. Sure, there were still plenty of houses with enough lights on the front lawn to rival a sports arena, but not nearly so many as in past years. Rather than half the houses on the block vying for the greatest kilowatt usage, there was perhaps one, or two. It was as if that slow, steady decline that I have been measuring over the past thirty years suddenly slumped to new lows.  I asked a friend if she'd noticed the paucity of Christmas lights. She felt the reverse was true. Because people are more insecure about their future than ever, they put up even more decorations in the hopes that the lights would brighten otherwise depressed moods. If that was the case for her, I guess her neighborhood was unique.  2009 is going to be an interesting year. Discretionary interstate travel is definitely down. In uncertain times, I hope we'll take the time to discover overlooked gems close to home. And I may just take up counting houses with Christmas decorations again.