Did I tell you how much I love potatoes? Love ‘em. Not so much on my license plates, though. So, in the late 1980s my brother, Kent Just, and I set out to give Idahoans a choice. I located the company that made the reflective material used on the license plates at that time and learned that you could buy it in strips. I ordered a roll of the stuff and had slogans printed on it in the same size, font, and color as the slogan on the license plates. Buyers could peel off the paper on the back and stick the new slogan over “Famous Potatoes.” We sold them for a couple of bucks through Stinker Stations. You could pick from “Famous Potholes,” “The Whitewater State,” “The Gem State,” “Where Utah Skis,” and “Tick Fever State.”
Kent acted as the front man on this project, because I was working for the State of Idaho at the time and was a little unsure about how my employer would take this little prank. We got publicity for the project in papers from Washington State to Washington DC. Some of the articles made it sound like we had a factory cranking these out by the thousands. I had a roll of stickers and a pair of scissors.
Encouraging people to put an unauthorized sticker on a license plate ruffled the feathers of the folks over at Idaho State Police HQ. They made noises about it sufficient enough to convince us stop selling them. We were certain we were on solid legal ground because the US Supreme Court had already ruled that it was legal to cover up a license plate slogan in the name of free speech (New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die”). Still, it didn’t seem worthwhile to hire a lawyer for a $150 joke. We’d had our fun, and we’d already made our money back.
Kent passed away in 2017. I know he wouldn’t mind my adding this little footnote to a footnote in Idaho history. I can hear his way-too-loud laugh right now.
Kent acted as the front man on this project, because I was working for the State of Idaho at the time and was a little unsure about how my employer would take this little prank. We got publicity for the project in papers from Washington State to Washington DC. Some of the articles made it sound like we had a factory cranking these out by the thousands. I had a roll of stickers and a pair of scissors.
Encouraging people to put an unauthorized sticker on a license plate ruffled the feathers of the folks over at Idaho State Police HQ. They made noises about it sufficient enough to convince us stop selling them. We were certain we were on solid legal ground because the US Supreme Court had already ruled that it was legal to cover up a license plate slogan in the name of free speech (New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die”). Still, it didn’t seem worthwhile to hire a lawyer for a $150 joke. We’d had our fun, and we’d already made our money back.
Kent passed away in 2017. I know he wouldn’t mind my adding this little footnote to a footnote in Idaho history. I can hear his way-too-loud laugh right now.
Idaho was far more famous for its potatoes than its potholes, but who could resist?
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