23D to 23WW
This morning, Smithsonian Magazine online has a reminiscing article about license plates, that takes me back.
I don't know about earlier, but my boyhood memory is Florida license plates identifying the county of the car's residence, it must have been by population size at some point, Bay County was 23, for example. Dade County was 1, I think Duval County was 2, and Escambia County was 9 as I recall. So the first number on a license plate declared which county you were from. Robert may remember.
That wasn't all. The next figure after the county number identified the category of the car, I'm pretty sure the weight class, but to me as a car nut it was the prestige level, a status symbol! For example, 23- (dash) was the lightest car as I recall. Our car was 23D, but Scotty's mother's Buick was 23W and so was my grandmother's Chrysler, 9W. Early, while he provided her with Chryslers, my grandfather Gentry drove Plymouths, which, like our Chevrolet, was D, so 9D. I wanted us to have a W car, hopefully my favorite brand, a Buick, which finally happened when I was in college.
It grew though: in the 1960s my mother had an enormous Buick Electra 225 Riviera sedan that had a 23WW license plate.
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Likely, I was the only kid on the block who cared what our car's license plate said about our car status.
Trucks, my father's large trucks for hauling seafood had different series, G or GK as I recall.
My favorite car has always been Buick, and I/we have had any number of them, always the quietest of all cars, including noticeably quieter riding than the Lincoln, Mercury, Cadillac, and Oldsmobile cars I've owned.
All our Navy years, our cars had Florida license plates, and I had a Florida drivers license. After retiring from the Navy we had to get Pennsylvania plates and driver licenses, as I learned by having to pay a fine of some $500 or so when I was stopped for speeding in Harrisburg and was cited for driving with a Florida license.
At some point Florida abandoned the number designation of county on license plates. Now it's all a six-digit series of numbers and letters, or you can purchase a vanity plate with your name or bragging about your university, or that you like gardening, or wildlife, or a dozen other things. I think I could get a license plate that announces my Navy background. Or, I think, pro-life or some other moral or social or political stand.
Plus, as well as no longer having to get a new plate every year, you keep the same one for several years, IDK how many, but you get a little sticker that goes up in the corner telling when the plate expires. And the six digit system gives practically infinite possibilities for statewide numbering: 10 numerals plus 26 letters (don't double up Oh and Zero) = 36 x 36 x 36 x 36 x 36 x 36 or 36 to the sixth power = a lot of license plates.
In Florida we never had license plates on both front and back of the car, as they did in Alabama, where, as I recall, they too used the county numbering system - - if an Alabama car had a 1 plate you knew they were from Birmingham. A 2 plate meant Mobile. Georgia plates? I don't remember. Tennessee had the best plates, shape of the state.
Seems to me that some or all of the license plates in Florida's regular numbering series also state the county in which they were issued. My car's plate may read Bay, I'm not sure. And it may say Sunshine State. I think it says MyFlorida.com.
There was a while when all Florida license plates were orange and blue, which, IDK, may have been for state colors, orange oranges and blue sky, but the FSU whiners kicked in that it was not fair to have all UF color license plates, so that went out.
Just remembering.
W