Remember the times when one needed a tool to open a can or bottle?
That was in the days before dozens of techniques were developed to ease access to stuff. A husband once came home to his wife’s announcement that the electricity had gone off and therefore, no supper.
“But we cook with gas,” he said. She answered, “But the can opener’s electric.”
When I was a child, opening a can of cat food required the use of an 80-pound opener which, if you dropped it, would open your foot instead. Today, my wife showed up with an eight-pack of cat food that comes in plastic cups with an easy-open foil on top. Times have changed.
So has language usage. At a birthday party for my grandson and namesake, I asked my son Diego for a church key. He then asked his son, Arthur, “Where do we keep the church key?” Blank.
It meant nothing to Arthur. Diego, of the middle generation, had probably heard the term only from me.
Growing up in the ‘50s, I was convinced one couldn’t succeed in life without intimate knowledge of the church key. A church key is what we call a portable device that pierces the top of a can of beer or soda pop. True, the other end of the church key may have a more rounded tip to lift off bottle caps, but it’s not really a church key unless it has that pointy thingy for cans.
Without prelude or explanation, I asked several co-workers to define a church key. Those closer to my generation, Don Pace, Sherry Ann Clancy, Lee Einer and Cindi Lefler, immediately identified it as a bottle and/or can opener. The others — part of the much-younger generation — David Romero, Maria Sanchez, Chrissy Johnson, Erica Casares, Erin Lopez, Ray Baca, Amanda Skotchdopole and even Managing Editor David Giuliani — in diapers when I used my first church key — answered the same way: “I have no idea.”
After I told David Romero and Chrissy about church keys, David said his mother used to have one to open up cans of evaporated milk. And I mentioned practically developing arthritis trying to wrench off the cap from a bottle of foreign beer, which I thought was a twist-off.
As people who know their way around a church key, Lee Einer and Cindi Lefler came up with other ways of improvising. For example, some of today’s toothless opened pop bottles with their molars or stuck the bottle between the door and door jamb. Some used a car bumper as a pry.
Lee even reminded me of the Army-issue can opener, a two-piece hinged device, about an inch by a half inch, used to open C rations, sealed cans whose lid needed to be pried off to get to the mystery meat. Left open in one’s pocket, the Army can opener usually punctured one’s femur.
Because there aren’t that many products anymore that require a tool of any kind, devices like church keys naturally are going to fade from the vocabulary. Thus, it appears strictly a question of age regarding who’s heard about church keys.
And why were they so named? A couple of co-workers suggest I “Google it,” that is, look it up on the Internet, but that would be too easy. I’d like to assume the shape of the tool simply resembles the ornate but bulky keys monks of the middle ages carried to open massive church doors.
In Denmark last year, Bonnie and I toured a host of churches, all with enormous doors. It’s hard to imagine an emaciated medieval nun wrestling with 1,000 pounds of portal. Some churches had a smaller door inside the larger door. The big door clearly was opened only for processions and funerals. We even saw a three-in-one church door that contained two progressively smaller doors, the smallest one wide enough for one person.
Church keys aren’t the only devices unrecognizable to people born less than 40 years ago. John Geffroy forwarded an e-mail that ponders the term “fender skirt.” Many men handled these skirts without getting slapped. The missive also mentions “curb feelers,” “steering knobs” and “running boards.”
One of these days I’ll poll Optic employees on their knowledge of these terms as well, but I’m sure the callow staffers will respond with “I have no idea,” whereas people like Cindi and Lee will be happy to tell all about them.
•••
Like the person from Carlsbad who’s never seen the caverns or the resident of Flagstaff who has yet to tour the Grand Canyon, I’d never participated in the Places With a Past program sponsored by the Citizens Committee for Historic Preservation.
One of the highlights was a tour of the Montezuma Castle. Even though I once taught classes there, I realize now how little I knew about it. A docent, an Arizona transplant, John Pintek, filled in many of the gaps. When John’s part of the tour ended, at the United World College dining hall, his wife Roz took over, giving detailed information and fielding questions as if she’d been born there.
Future tours ought to be even more successful when they’re conducted by docents like John and Roz Pintek, who possess a kind of enthusiasm that’s contagious.
A panel discussion on the Immaculate Conception School last week featured moderator Martha Johnsen, Father George Salazar, and I.C. graduates Martha Gurule Archuleta, her sister Mary Rose Gurule Pacheco, Dolores Rudolph Maes, Helen Gallegos Esquibel and Eddie Groth.
Following presentations by the panel, members of the audience — which included a host of I.C. alumni — provided some of their own anecdotes. One bit of I.C. trivia concerned the almost non-existent budget for athletics five decades ago. During a dialogue which included Mariano Pino, Martin Suazo, Artie Geoffrion and Eddie Groth, all former athletes, we learned that the I.C. Colts football team was doing well against Santa Rosa — until the Lions deciphered I.C.’s offensive strategy. Eddie pointed out that scoring became much harder for the Colts once the Lions defense figured out that the player with the team’s only helmet would be the one carrying the football.
•••
756* homers. That’s how Wednesday’s national press trumpeted Barry Bonds’ achievement. ‘Tis pity there has to be an asterisk.