The Tennessee DMV...

I'm going to try and keep this as simple as possible...

Here's the California scenario... your vehicle registration comes from the DMV and it's usually a few hundred dollars. If you delay paying it gives you elevated prices as a penalty and then no matter when you actually register, it is retroactive to the day the registration was due. Going further, if you get a fix-it ticket or some kind of correctable violation you have to get it signed and I think my last one was around $15.

Well, in Tennessee they operate a little differently. My uncle and I share this purple '93 Ford Ranger with a cracked windshield and hanging side view mirror. Over the weekend, he got pulled over by the State Trooper with one of those flat-brimmed Canadian Mounty hats because the stickers were out of date on the plate.

The truck is in the name of a missionary here who is rarely around and hadn't been able to get to it since it just came due in JULY! So, we go down to the courthouse in Altamont which houses every imaginable government office. Now, to register the vehicle it would have been only $24 (I'm becoming increasingly bitter about the $160 "congestion charging zone" ticket that Johnny and I got during our first day in London). The lady tells us that it's only $21 for a new tag (their term for a license plate) and that we can do that instead. Ok, sure... so we get the paperwork back and it is now registered for another full year.

We then head upstairs to show proof of vehicle registration to take care of my uncle's ticket. The lady copies the registration and hands it back to me and we're done. I was seriously confused. How much is this going to cost? Do we pay later? Nope... all done. This can't be right!!

The lesson that the state of Tennessee just taught me was DO NOT REGISTER your vehicle until forced to do so by the law because all the time that you drive without it being registered is FREE and when you do get caught there's no punishment except to visit Altamont and make a photo diary out of it.