I was working at the Student Store at Oklahoma State University in the supplies area when a bunch of us were opening boxes of supplies that we were supposed to put on the shelves. It was a box of art supplies, I think, that when I cut the tape and that first blast of air hit my face I said, "Wow, that smells like license plates."
It was like I just said that I eat paste or that on weekends I'm a professional polka dancer. My coworkers looked at me like I was insane and I looked at them like I expected them to totally know what I was talking about. They obviously didn't know and I had to backup and tell them that my grandpa sold old license plates. They still looked at me like I was crazy because, selling license plates also isn't very normal.
I'm not sure how he got into it. I've asked but I guess I never really listened to the answer, if he gave me an answer at all. He just did. When it wasn't even popular, my grandpa went around to court houses around Texas and asked if he could have all the unissued plates that they might have lying around. Turns out that they did have lots of plates just taking up valuable space so they just handed them over with a "thank you, sir" and his collection grew and grew. Sometimes, someone he knew would call him up and tell him about an old barn or chicken coop that had a ton on license plates nailed up all over it. He would go out and, with the permission of the owner of course, pull them off, clean them up and add those to his collection as well.
I'm sure (because I have never done an actual count) that my grandpa has over 200,000 license plates in his collection. That's a lot of damn plates. So, as a small child, with nearly a quarter million of those things lying around, I kind of knew what they smelled like. It didn't really process that others wouldn't have had the same education in smells that I did.
What do they smell like? There's a hint of that smell tires have, and there is a bit of a bite of metal that tickles your nose like when you lick a nine volt battery. The NOS plates have paper in between them so they have a really strong smell of old newspaper. A lot of them have a smell like dirt mixed with all the other scents. The plates that we take to swap meets also smell like the plastic sleeves they are in. That smell gets stronger after they have been sitting out in the sun all day long. Those plates also sit in these wooden crates that my grandpa built so they have a little woody or nutty smell layer on top.
All of this is stored somewhere in my brain. They say that smells evoke the strongest memories and I totally agree with that. License plate smell always makes me think of sunshine and oppressive heat. Cold drinks that get hot too quickly. Old men talking about what used to be. Folding lawn chairs with that plastic weave. And especially the motor home. That's what my grandpa would take to swap meets, this old 1980 behemoth of a motor home that refused to die. That has a smell too, kind of like license plates, and swap meets, and dust and sunshine.
Kelsey.
