Growing up in Louisa – Unlocked Doors?
Weekly feature . . . by Mike Coburn
Over and over when I hear my peers talking about growing up either in a small town, or in a rural area, I note they consistently point out that no one bothered to lock their doors at night. I have to agree that was my experience, too. As far as I remember, it was uncommon for anyone to lock the doors to their homes. In fact, if I was going to a friend’s house I rarely even knocked on the door before bursting in and maybe rushing upstairs to kick my friend out of bed. That alone should have been cause enough to change the practice by locking doors, especially when they knew I’d be on the loose.
I think that it was, in part, a matter of trust. After all, our small community typically didn’t have a huge criminal element making off with our limited goods. Another reason may have been because locking doors was perceived as frightfully inconvenient. The concept of their friends, neighbors, kids and others having to carry keys, or bang on the door and wait an answer, was an unnecessary interruption and a rather foreign idea. Many figured that locks were meant for the mistrusted big cities and those ‘city slickers.’ Locked doors wouldn’t put off a professional crook. They were more to keep the ‘honest people honest,’ or whatever.
The doors of our home were pretty much always open to anyone. We shut the doors during cold weather, or when we went to bed. Even then shutting them didn’t mean we locked them. In fact, it would have been a lot of trouble to do so with any regularity. As with many homes with kids, there was a constant line crossing our thresholds. By that I mean the front, but also the back doors. I’ve heard the comment over and over that we had a revolving door. So if someone wanted to come in our house we figured they must have a good reason, or were just intending to drop by for a friendly visit.
There were some that didn’t fit that mode that still came in. It was on Saturday mornings that I think the ‘butter lady’ and a number of others would come and go without particular notice. As evidence I would often see a new mound of butter in the refrigerator after I had slept in on a Saturday morning. The nice lady was careful not to wake anyone. I think we left the money on the table for her, so she had little reason to make any noise.
When our friends came by we were happy and excited to see them. Often, they were the source of local news, so their visit was our life-line to the greater community. If we even had a key to our front door, I have no idea where it was kept. If we were out of town on a short trip, everyone around would know it and they would know when we were expected back. We knew our neighbors would watch out for us, and we them, for that matter.
While not exactly the same, our car (when we had one) was never locked, either. Of course we had to have a key to start it up, but one or two keys would do the trick. I knew people who just kept one handy in the ignition so they wouldn’t have to go through their purse or pockets, or find the last person to have driven it. Then, everyone knows that keys are small and tend to get lost in the bottom of drawers, containers, etc. I know some who just hung their keys on a nail next to the front door in case they were needed. I thought it was silly that to use a restroom at a filling station, you’d have to go in and ask for the key, but I’m guessing that’s how I learned to use keys.
Let’s face it. If a key was lost it was inconvenient and frustrating. Some folks I knew habitually arrived late to meetings because they had to stop and search for keys. Being the ‘laid back’ folk that we were, we didn’t want to get ourselves upset or angry over something we could have just as easily avoided. Why if you think life was slow back then, then figure out how much slower it would be if you had to stop and hunt for a stupid key all the time. Who needs the stress?
I knew a farmer that put a chain and padlock on his fence gate so that rustlers wouldn’t steal his dairy cows. The farmer really didn’t want to keep track of the key, so he decided that he’d just make it look as if it were latched, but it really wouldn’t be. After all, if someone did break through the gate then maybe they wouldn’t damage the lock or the gate. Another farmer just drove a nail into the post next to the gate and hung the key there. That made it easy. Both farmers were worried that they might one day find themselves out there on their tractor and not be able to get through the gate by want of a key. I guess they could have hidden the key under a rock, but then he’d likely forget which rock and would be unduly delayed. Worse yet, someone else might use the key and fail to put it back. If I remember right, he kept the chain and the unlocked lock in place for nearly a year before someone came along and tried to do a good deed by pushing the lock closed. The farmer got mad upon finding himself locked out, so he took his metal shears and removed the lock and chain.
Out back of the home I grew up in on Clay Street, there was a little building we called the ‘wash house.’ I don’t know why it had that name because it didn’t have plumbing and I never saw anybody doing the wash out there. It was close to an old well that Granny had filled in, so maybe the name carried over from another time. The wash house was ‘L’ shaped and had two rooms, each with an outside door. One room of the structure was a small, shelved closet of sorts. I suppose it might have been a pantry or storage room, even if it was across the back yard and a good way from our kitchen. The other, a much larger room, was empty. It could have been used as a bedroom, but it wasn’t finished inside and had no heat source. I recall, too, that it had an attic space, which I explored, of course, but that, too, was empty. The door to this section had a hasp designed for a pad lock, but we used a tapered stick instead. The only reason we used anything at all was the door wouldn’t stay shut without something holding it closed using that latch. I remember the stick broke once and I had to look to find another stick that I could whittle to fit the hole just right. What a waste of time. I could have been learning a new trade, like maybe being a lock-smith.
This little building reminds me of one of my friends that lived in a small, rustic cabin out near Fallsburg. The door had leather hinges, but they worked just fine. There was a two-by-four that held the door closed when they were inside at night, but only a looped string that hooked over a nail to hold the door closed during the day when no one was home. It kept the animals out, I guess. At least the dumb ones. You couldn’t really call it a lock, but then maybe it was in a rudimentary way.
There weren’t a lot of murders or break-ins back in my day, and those poor folk that were killed usually knew their murderer. Likely as not they would have had a key, or would know how to get around that kind of problem. It was common for some people to keep a loaded gun over the door in case there was an intruder or an Indian attack. Actually, if there was an intruder he’d be closer to the gun than the owner. Times have changed these days. Now you are supposed to unload the gun, put a trigger guard on it, lock it in a safe and then eat the paper that had the combination. I think you can still have a flashlight handy in case you need to get to your weapon in the middle of the night to pick the locks. I’m sure most decent robbers will wait while you work at getting yourself armed. It would only be fair. Instead of being minute men we are now to be twenty-to-thirty minute men.
There are those of you that might find this kind of thinking is irresponsible and risky. After all, security is becoming so important in these digital days. Of course many of us still use keys, but the next generation will not. In just a few decades they won’t know anything about locks or keys. They tell me that your door will read the retina of your eyes as you approach the stoop so the ‘smart’ door will just fly open for you, maybe with the sounds of ruffles and flourishes. Perhaps a mechanical arm will hand you your bedroom slippers? Even our cars will ‘feel’ our approach, know us, and start up the engine. Why not? The car will do the driving, too. It will order up some coffee ahead of arriving at the fast food place and then pay for it from your account as it drives through. I guess the car will find a good price to fill up its’ gas tank, then drive over there and suck up the joy juice, all by itself. Why, we won’t be needed at all.
One day recently I tried to order a car registration on-line, but it required a password (an electronic kind of key.) The password was to protect me from other people charging their registrations against my account. I’m sure there’s a whole pack of thieves out there looking to hack into my DMV account. The problem was that I had never been to the site before and had not set up a password. I tried the ‘800’ number but was put on hold. I gave up after 20 minutes and drove to the DMV. I should have done that in the first place. The nice clerk (a rarity today) understood and helped me. She offered to set up a password for next time, but I refused and told her I’d rather see her pretty face once a year. She smiled. (Poor thing may be replaced by a robot soon, but it will know my password.)
I love those places (sarcasm) that require me to enter a password. Some lock you out if you try more than three times. I had one site that I had personally caused to be designed tell me I wasn’t a member. Never mind that I was a past president, and a ‘life member’ of the organization. I am listed on that site as one of a few that have the coveted walnut plaque! Amazingly, the site doesn’t have any national secrets, or any good reason to block access, so it’s no wonder they had to block me. Maybe they know me better than I think?
Anyway, after a few phone calls, being put on hold, and listening to music I didn’t like, my password was reset. Don’t tell them, but I broke protocol and wrote the new password down in several places, including on my personal server in an electronic file I call ‘passwords.’ Nobody will ever figure that out. It may be a bit like hiding a key under a flower pot, but give me a break. Sometimes I just have to access various sites and don’t have time to hunt for keys.
The next thing I love after I successfully sign in, is when the system tells me I must change my password. When I go to do that, it won’t let me use any I’ve ever thought about using before. Security is such a concern I can’t wait for technology to truly catch up and just know from my DNA that’s it’s me. It would only cost me a drop of blood or a bucket of spit, and I’m in!
For folks not in the know, there is a thing out there called ‘I oT’ (Internet of Things) that means that in this digital age everything ‘talks’ to each other. An example is when refrigerator realizes the bulb is burning out and automatically orders a new one. It is shipped the same day. (broken, of course) I’m thinking the door knob may soon order me a pine box if it figures out I’m dying. The joke is on them! I won’t need the box. I’ll be in a vase! I wonder if my kitchen knows what I’d like for supper? If so, that’s great because I haven’t a clue.
All this new stuff is a bit scary to this fellow. I’m computer literate and have used them to advantage most of my career, but I’m afraid we’re losing personal space with this invasion by IoT. We used to worry about who was seeing who, but now we’ll likely be able to discover all the ugly details. Will we have time to live our own lives? Do we build more firewalls? Must we just find a new way to outfox those who would ‘hack’ into our lives and steal our goodies? I’m thinking a wall around our cities with big gates might work. We could even lock the gates. Wait a minute! Let’s just buy the lock and toss the key away, eh?
