DISAPPEARING INK

“He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.” Revelation 3:5)

Those of you who get bored with Massachusetts automotive trivia may fall asleep before the end of this posting, but I’ve been noticing a problem with disappearing ink. No, I don’t mean the fun “disappearing ink” that many of us played with as kids and I suppose is still sold at joke shops. Have you noticed that the ink on many of the MA automobile inspection stickers which expire in 2010 is disappearing?! Virtually everybody who has a car registered in Massachusetts currently has an inspection sticker affixed to the windshield somewhere in the lower right (“passenger side”) area. The stickers which expire in 2009 have green background trim and in the center a large numeral which indicates the month the sticker expires. (Incidentally, if your car has one of those greenish 2009 stickers, the numeral should be 8 or higher. If it’s 7 or below, your sticker has expired and you are subject to being ticketed and fined.) If your car has a sticker which expires in 2010, it has a red background trim, and also a large numeral in the center.

I have a numeral 1 (January) sticker on my 1989 Volkswagen Golf. I noticed a few weeks ago that the sticker’s red background trim had faded to pink. The trim is now completely gone! Most of you know my late father was a Registry of Motor Vehicles official, so I just tend to notice this stuff. I’ve noticed that many cars with 2010 stickers with the lower digits...1,2,3....also have badly fading stickers. I wonder to what degree they’ll continue to fade. Will we eventually have nothing more than a white blob on our windshields?

Massachusetts’ inspection stickers of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were very “cool”. In those days we had probably the most boring license plates in the nation. The “Commonwealth” had a policy of not wanting any slogans or pictures on the license places. (Considering today’s “Cape Cod and Islands” “Patriots” “Red Sox” and other Massachusetts license plates, that seems laughable, but things were very different in that era.) Our plates were boring but we had the most attractive auto inspection stickers in the country. I sell authentic, genuine, collectible MA inspection stickers of the period to collectors and classic car buffs. The stickers of that era were often bright orange, bright red, bright green, bright blue, or bright yellow. It was not unusual to see really creative stuff on them. The 1977 stickers (Spring was green and Fall was yellow) had a characature drawing of a mechanic and the slogan “YOUR SAFETY IS MY BUSINESS”. The 1978 stickers (red and blue) had a photo of a Registry cop on them. The 1979 stickers (yellow and green) had the photo of a Registry police car on them.

I don’t ever remember any previous inspections stickers FADING, but I do know Massachusetts had a terrible problem with its 1963 series license plates. In those days, new sets of license plates were issued every other year. (On the off year, the registration was shown as valid by an additional sticker which went on the upper, center of the windshield.) We’d had green ‘61 plates with white lettering which were replaced by black ‘63 plates with white lettering. Almost immediately, the paint started peeling off the plates and the plates started rusting. On my fathers cars, things were fine, because he had the places in secure enclosed transparent frames, but any of the plates which were exposed to the elements rusted. By the time JFK was assassinated, most Massachusetts plates were completely illegible. This made things tough for law enforcement and embarrassing for anybody with a Massachusetts car on the road around the country.

There were a number of theories about what happened with the 1963 plates. A common theory was that the prisoners who made the license plates urinated into the big vats of black paint, but I think that’s an urban legend. Although we were not supposed to get new license plates until 1965, due to the problem, all Massachusetts cars got new maroon and white plates for 1964. The first of the modern white with dark lettering Massachusetts plates with reflectorized paint were issued in 1967 and were intended to be on the cars for several years. Today it’s not uncommon to have the same plates on a car for ten or more years.

Has your sticker expired? Has your stickers paint faded? Have you fallen asleep?!