Introduction and an epiphany of sorts

I have seen both the east end (Cape Cod) and the west end (Bishop California), and have crossed its bridge over the Mississippi (from Rock Island, Illinois to Davenport, Iowa, piggybacked on I-74) on several occasions. For the first 31 years of my life, my legal address was never more than 15 miles from either US 6 or US 15, even though I lived in four different states during that time. When I lived in Iowa, my daily commute was roughly 14 miles, 13 of which was on US 6.

Jtot – I hope you’re listening. This is story time for today.

any of you want to walk down memory lane.

I’m older than you guys — 53 — but still think of that area as “home”. Mom still lives in Trout Run; we get up there 3-5 times a year — not often enough!

the Ford tractor that actually had a starter was the shit. The Farmall with the magneto ignition was a pain in the rear. What are lights?

I started out driving the tractor. At lunchtime, I drove the entire crew to the house on the wagon. Unfortunately, I released the clutch before the engine stopped, just as everyone was standing on the wagon ready to hop off. After knocking everybody on their fannies, I was relegated to the wagon stacking/bale throwing crew for the rest of the summer.

Not to get specifically political, but generally people will get worked up over a potential .01% tax increase (or refusal to renew a .05% tax break) and literally determine their entire vote on that premise, meanwhile there is shit like that and other hidden costs for small businesses and licenses of many professions that have a much greater effect on a fellow or lady’s bottom line. I mean…$460 is more than just a small fee for any company producing less than like $500k.

Their vehicle registration fees are not that out of line compared to the rest of the world, albeit they are all ridiculous (and why you have to register anything more than one time until it transfers ownership, I’ll never understand).

The rub is that they force you to re-title your car in order to register it in the state. That’s the rule regardless of the age of the vehicle, the fact that it remained in her own name, and that we were moving from a state with some of the highest sales tax to DE which has no sales tax (i.e., we did not title in another state to avoid paying DE money). The “document fee” for re-titling is 3.75% of the value of the vehicle. So, I can’t remember exactly what her fee was, but it was definitely in excess of $400 just to be able to then pay the registration fee on top of it. If she had bought a new car a few months before we left, that fee could easily have extended into the thousands.

I’m not sure what it’s like in most states since we’ve not had to transfer states before, but I can say without hesitation that, even if it is the norm, that is absolutely ridiculous. She owns the car. She had a document proving that already. A document she paid a lot of money for. And, why in the hell does the re-sale value of the vehicle dictate what a title costs? Is your title printed on fancier paper if you drive a Bugatti vs. a Ford Focus? Does that record cost more to maintain?

It’s a real shit sandwich when you end up getting blind sided by big fees you weren’t expecting and that you can’t understand any rational need for. Every April I know I’m going to have to give my hard-earned money to Uncle Sam. I’m prepared for that and I have some ideas about how that money is spent. But >$400 on top of the thousands we paid to move had my girlfriend literally in tears… and has made it that much more difficult to convince her that moving to DE was actually a good idea (even though we’re about 700 miles closer to where we want to be than we were last year).