Another Day in the Country
Searching for keys
© Another Day in the Country
It has been quite a while now since I’ve registered at a hotel and received a real key — one of those metal emblems of entry that you would fit into a matching slot and gently turn, opening a door to somewhere new.
Previously, no entry granted. One must have the key to get inside. Without a key, you are forbidden to go in. I like that idea. In fact, it would be accurate to say that I love keys. I’ve always been fascinated with them.
That said, I’ll admit to having a collection of keys. There are quite a few skeleton keys made of everything from bronze to steel. There are keys that once fit something but are not longer viable. There are keys that I’ve found and haven’t a clue where they came from. There are keys that I’ve lost and then found when I got ready to sell a car and cleaned out the glove box or moved from one house to another.
When we first came to Ramona, we had so many keys because we were running a bed and breakfast business. I color-coded the keys and made lots of duplicates. When we sold the big house, there were a handful of keys to hand over, mostly symbolic.
I’ve gotten souvenir keys from various places through the years, including one from Sing Sing Prison and another from San Quentin.
There’s a famous hotel in Singapore where even more famous authors drank too much and had their names engraved on tables in the bar.
I never stayed there, but I ate a wonderful meal in their restaurant and had to have a symbolic key to take home with me. The key tag, bigger by some bit than the key, says “Raffles.”
There is something about a key that’s intriguing. If you know the lock it fits, you are privileged. You have been granted an honor — to hold the key — whether it is to someone’s heart, a strong box, or a locked door.
The shape of a key is fascinating to me. The symbology of the notches and grooves holds a secret combination that unlocks something precious, someone unknown, somewhere new or someplace dearly familiar.
Remember when diaries came with tiny generic keys that were purely symbolic but promised privacy? Do you remember your first key? What was it for?
If you had one key, you were lucky. An abundance signaled prosperity. Girls wore tiny keys around their neck. Guys gathered them and slung them from a hip so that they jangled when they walked.
And then, evidently, keys became ho-hum.
I remember the first time I went to a motel and was handed a keycard. A what? It was a piece of plastic, like a credit card, and was very capricious about actually opening the door.
Were you holding your breath right? Did you need to wiggle it? Was there a secret about how fast you put the card in or took it out? Was this thing dependable? Who else had one?
When my grandson was 7, my daughter and I took him on a cruise to Alaska. All the rooms on the ship were opened with a keycard. Every occupant received one, including our 7-year-old.
Not only did this keycard let you into your room. You also could buy things with that card, like ice cream cones and pizza, drinks and souvenirs.
He had just received the key to the kingdom and was so proud to be able to run ahead and open the door to our cozy abode onboard, always grinning from ear to ear.
There are lots of experiences, details that he’s long ago forgotten, about that momentous voyage, where we watched killer whales hunting and icebergs melting. But he has never forgotten what it felt like to have that keycard.
I think the magic would have been even more intense if it had been a real key and not just a piece of plastic. Oh, well, that’s progress.
The day after April Fools, my sister and I were in Salina running errands. She had an appointment so we pulled up at the office and changed seats. She grabbed her purse and waved me off because no parking spaces were available. Busy spot, downtown Salina.
I drove blissfully out to Wal-Mart to get cedar chips. I’ve discovered that my chickens and ducks love cedar chips in their nests. They keep the eggs clean even in rainy weather, so I love them, too. We needed more.
I parked and turned off the car. A light was flashing on the dashboard.
“Searching for key fob,” it said.
My sister had the fob in her purse, and it was with her in downtown Salina while I was in a far-off parking and could not restart the car. What a drama!
While I waited for her to figure out a way to get from there to here, eventually I Googled, “Who thought of that bright idea of having a silly fob for a car instead of a key?”
I was pretty sure it wasn’t a woman.
Sure enough, it’s some guy who got the bright idea from one of those motel keycards and said, “Why not?”
In my opinion, some inventions, like keys, do not need to be improved upon. It would very much have improved my day in the country to have had a spare key available, secreted away somewhere in her car.