Mercifully, I have a short drive to work — eleven minutes when the traffic is right. I promised myself when I moved to Taos I would commute no mas.
Still with five traffic lights, I have a lot of stop and go. And a little time to look around. A while back I noticed license plates in New Mexico can have something worth reading.
I don’t mean vanity plates. People pay for those. The word “vanity” says it all. Ditto on bumper stickers, which tend to be on the liberal side here in Taos. (My all-time favorite: Carpe mañana.)
I like license plates that say words by chance. They are never full words because they don’t include vowels. But many have enough consonants so I can fill in the blanks.
On my drive yesterday I saw a license plate with PTY, which could be PITY, and PLL, which could be PULL. TRK is TRUCK or TRICK. RHT could be RIGHT. That’s just a small sampling.
Of course, many license plates that have consonant combinations don’t meet this criteria. They’re just a cluster of letters. But there are always enough that do in two rows of traffic to keep me guessing while I wait for the light to change.