I lived in the Bay Area for 12 years. Left my '73 Spider wrapped in plastic there 10 years ago. This was the year to come back and spend my vacation getting it running again. Towed it from the side yard of an obliging young lady in Boulder Creek and up to San Francisco, where the redoubtable Angelo of Italian Motor Service lent his expertise to all of the parts beyond the scope of my modest talent.
$2000 in parts, many scraped knuckles and boxcars full of swear words later, My Beloved seemed ready to assay the drive back to Texas. Next step: renew the registration to make her legal on California roads. Straightforward enough, thinks this old hillbilly. Sign the little affidavit saying that the vehicle has not been driven on state roads since the last registration (true enough), pay for this year's license plate and begin motoring.
At the Department of Motor Vehicles, I was invited to stand in line. Only three people in line ahead of me. Great! Two hours later, there is still one person ahead of me. No appointment, you know. In only one more hour, I am called to meet my Maker... er, DMV clerk.
I explain the situation. Present the previous registration, pink slip and license plate. Show my current Texas driver's license and proof of residency. She rattles around on her keyboard for a minute or so.
"That will be $738.42."
Breathe deep. Don't raise your voice. Remain calm. Think kind thoughts. "Miss, I'm going to drive this car to the Arizona border. For that kind of money I could strap it to the top of a taxi cab and carry it there. There has been a mistake."
She has calculated that I will pay for nine years of unused registrations plus therent sticker. I joke with her. I wheedle and cajole. She will not relent. Finally, my temper goes into pre-combustion. I allow as I would rather crawl thru oceans of rancid chorizo than give in to the unmentionable Department of Motor Vehicle's vile extortion.
"You have no choice." She smiles with the soul sucking satisfaction of a state employee who never has to produce real work, cannot be fired and has only to avoid dropping dead of stroke to be able to feed at the public trough for decades.
"I have a choice," I declaim proudly. "I choose the ninety nine cent registration!"
"What the hell is that?"
I say nothing else and leave the other victims to their wretched fate. Outside the building is a parking lot with one section marked "EMPLOYEES ONLY" God forbid that mere taxpayers should be allowed to park in the actual lot that they financed. I locate a car with six or seven years of accumulated registration stickers on the rear plate. I make the pretense of bending down to light a cigarette while shielding myself from the afternoon breeze. (Don't smoke. Have to act here.) A few seconds with the trusty Swiss Army knife and a lump of registration stickers with '96 on top is mine.
A stop at 7-11, where 99 cents procures a tube of Super Glue and my car is legal. Two days of test driving in the Santa Cruz mountains were enough to iron out the obvious problems, and Lucretia made the trip thru the desert in fine style, proudly wearing her credentials.
I explained to the nice lady at the county tax assessor here that the California plates had disappeared while the car was in storage and that I had towed it out on the back of a flat bed truck. She issued a duplicate title and valid license plates for about $35. She said she hoped I would enjoy driving it in Texas.
I turned down a substantial pay raise and the chance to move back to California this year. Sometimes I miss the place. But we don't have high taxes. We don't have state income tax. And we don't have smog checks.
Further, though bureaucracies everywhere are the same, ours is one fiftieth the size of that group of self-officious, pudding brained, lock stepped, bottom feeding, slack jawed group of ass licking mouth breathers that they pay from Sacramento. To paraphrase Mark Twain, "I'd trade the lot of them for an old dog. Then I'd shoot the dog."
If any employee of the states of Texas or California should try to pursue this, I vehemently deny that any of it is true. And if you are the sorry SOB who had to make elaborate excuses to a state trooper about your missing registration stickers, I just wish I had been there to hear them. Hah.