A few years back I sold a Honda automobile to a private party. I had no use for the license plates so I dropped them into my king-size municipal trash bin, and on a Thursday a city truck hoisted the bin with its robotic arm and dumped a week’s worth of garbage, and my plates, into its hold and ambled on down the street.
A few months later I received a letter from the Green Bay police department alerting me to two unresolved parking tickets—pay up or come to court. Green Bay was 60 miles away. I had not been to Green Bay for many years. I finally realized that my old plates had been placed by a winter parking scofflaw on a brown Chevy Cavalier. It seemed nuts that someone sifted through tons of nasty trash to snag those plates and likely sold them because they had valid registration stickers. When I called the police, an officer asked if I’d submitted a License Plates Cancellation Application (MV2514) to the Wisconsin DOT. I was not aware of MV2514. Lesson learned—cut old plates into pieces before tossing them and submit MV2514. I had to pay those two tickets, and several more before the plates were cancelled.
“Remember that time your old plates got stolen?” asked my good friend Chuck Larson. “I think it works like that.”…