The in basket: On New Year’s Day I asked if anyone out there in
readerland recalled a time when gas prices didn’t end in 9/10ths of
a cent.
The out basket: I got three replies, the first from 80-year-old
Samuel Stout of Central Kitsap, who says he recalls buying gas for
a whole number of cents when he was 12 years old in northern
Indiana. He said he drove quite a bit at that age. It wasn’t legal
but no one did much about it, he said.
Monthly Archives: March 2007
What happened to free Narrows bridge idea?
The in basket: Two readers made reference a day apart in January
to a company that supposedly agreed to build the second Tacoma
Narrows Bridge at no cost to the state.
Tony Hayes of Bremerton said, “There was a company from Canada,
British Columbia, I believe, that said they could build the new
bridge for free down near the water and all they wanted was the
rights to generate and sell electricity generated from the current.
This idea was intriguing and I felt deserved some public
conversation.
Millions and billions of license plates
The in basket: In 2005, Greg Salo had written that available
state license plate numbers would run out soon, and Brad Benfield
of the state Department of Licensing agreed, saying his department
and Washington State Patrol were working on what numbering system
to adopt when our present three-number, three letter system runs
out by the end of the decade.
That column brought the following from Jim Brophy of Tracyton:
“I beseech you, please do not follow the cumbersome California
solution of adding a seventh character. Doing so brings the
total possible combinations, less those which may be obscene,
insulting or otherwise inappropriate, to 175,760,000. That should
certainly be adequate way into the future, however, have you
tried to quickly copy one of those ‘new’ numbers?
