What do you notice when you’re in a parking lot?
So I travel – a lot. And as I do, I tend to keep an eye out for the weird, wonderful, wild. These are the types of things that spark ideas for my novels – bits of interest for the plot or something to make my characters more interesting.
One thing I often notice is expired license plates. Doesn’t matter where I am, there are always a few. I get it – life happens. You ignore the renewal notice for whatever reason. And a month or two goes by. Not a big deal right?
Okay – so what about a year late? How about even longer than that?
I happened to be in Mississippi a while back and spotted a rather beat-up old car – a faded blue Volvo if you must know. The license plate was from Maine. At first, I felt sure I’d misread the dates on it. Those had to be wrong, ‘Sep 03.’ I stared at it for as long as I could before the car disappeared around a corner.
How does anyone manage to not get stopped for over twenty years with expired plates? How many states had this person driven through in that time? How was it even possible to have that license plate on a car?
My very active imagination began coming up with about a million scenarios for how he/she’s managed to evade capture while on the run.
Now it’s your turn. What do you think the reason might be for having those plates expired for over twenty years?
What will you stop for?
There’s so many interesting things along the journey and we can’t stop for them all. Why? Because we’re too busy. We have to be there (wherever there is) by a certain time. The kids keep asking if we’re there yet. I could go on but you get the idea. However, what are we missing by rushing? What should we notice but don’t? Everything is going to be there next time, you quietly say to yourself. Yet, will they be? How people dreamed of going to the Notre Dame and now if they do it won’t be the same.
Me? I like to take life slow. I like to take the back roads. I like to find the unique, odd, unusual, forgotten. Sure, I do go to the famous places. Not often, mind you. I’ve been to many of the places people have on their bucket lists. However, my preference is to get lost on some little country road. And discover something that not too many people know about. Like this cafe I snapped a picture of. I don’t know who had the idea to build the structure like this, but it’s fun and interesting.
Who said street signs have to be boring?
Can you guess what the name of this town is based on this street sign? I happened to wander into this little town in Pennsylvania and fell in love with it. The whole town is so cute with old buildings, a great small town vibe, friendly people. And then there were the street signs. I just had to snap a photo. This is just so clever and fun. It’s a conversation piece, a statement about hometown pride and more. I’m sure there’s some story about the history behind these signs and the symbol on them. I’ll leave that up to you to visit someday and learn what that might be.
If your town added a symbol to its street signs, what would it be? I’m sure for most places, it wouldn’t be as spot on as this one is. Take a moment and reflect, what’s behind your town’s name? What’s the history of how your town came into being? What represents that? Because wouldn’t it be fun and interesting if more places changed their signs to have a symbol on them. There we would be, driving along, trying to figure out what each symbol means. Or maybe I’m the only one that finds this facinating…