The Key is . . . The Key?

Get ready friends, because we are about to discuss one of the keys to life. A key part to a key aspect of each of our lives. Understanding this will be key, so be sure to follow closely. You will surely take away some key takeaways. Which is why they call them takeaways. What is this key? Why a key, of course.

What would life be without keys? It appears that we have been dealing with keys (and their associated locks) for about six thousand years. Wikipedia tells us that locks and keys have been discovered in the ruins of ancient Ninevah. Wikipedia does not tell us that ancient Ninevah fell to ruins because someone lost the keys to it, but in my experience this is as likely an explanation as any. The Romans developed metal locks (and keys for opening them) and those designs protected Roman citizens’ valuables, at least until the place was sacked by Vandals.

Modern locks with mechanical tumblers date back to the 18th century and have become nearly universal. Or were up until recently, anyway. Having a key for a lock was all about access and power, and the idea of a key became ubiquitous in modern culture. Maps have keys. Codes and ciphers have keys. Musical instruments, typewriters (and later computers) have keys.

Keystone in Arch of The Building

Music is written in in one of several keys. And sometimes is even written by a Key, as when Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner. There are keyways (slots where machine cogs fit), key words, key ideas, and even a key that describes an area on a basketball court. There are keystones – the oddly shaped stone that secures the center of a stone archway. Pennsylvania must have a lot of them, as it is the Keystone State.

In Catholic theology, Christ gave the apostle Peter “The Keys to the Kingdom”, in an allusion to a passage from the Book of Isiah which referred to an official who was put in charge by the king while the king was away, and who as a symbol of that authority, carried a gigantic key on his shoulder (Isaiah 22:22).

Why am I all of a sudden delivering a keynote composition on keys? It is because keys have been on my mind all week. It was Monday evening when I drove to work. The practice at my company is to pull your assigned truck out of a parking place, then park your car there until you return. I turned off my car, moved the truck after an initial inspection, then returned to my car to back it into the slot. Sadly, this had to be done by pushing the car because the car suddenly refused to start.

An online ride share was involved to get home ($28) and a tow truck the next day ($42 even after my AAA membership towing benefit). These were followed by some extensive diagnostics from my mechanic (about another $100). The problem was mostly solved when the shop called me and asked me to bring a key part – that being my other key. The use of which resulted in the car firing up immediately.

There has been much news recently about the common thefts of certain Hyundai and Kia vehicles because that company chose (until fairly recently) to eschew “chip technology” in its keys as an anti-theft measure. I have now experienced the other side of that debate – when my Honda with its sophisticated chip-equipped key decides that it is no longer interested in being a key. This problem was solved by purchasing a new key from my helpful Honda dealer (about $80), which helpfully programmed it to actually start my car (about another $100, including $15 in “shop supplies”). So some people with Hyundais get them stolen, and some people with Hondas don’t get them stolen, but have to pay $350 for the privilege of continuing to drive them. Which is probably about the same as the insurance deductible the owners of the stolen Hyundais must incur. I am trying to figure out who is better off.

I am also trying to figure out why this is necessary. I suppose there have been car thieves as long as there have been cars, because the online consensus is that keys to lock vehicle ignitions came into use around 1910. Remember that next time some old person tries to tell you that “in my day people didn’t steal things.” Once closed cars came into vogue, locks were used to keep interlopers out of the cars as well as to keep them from starting the cars once they were inside.

From the Operator’s Manual for the 1959 Chevrolet

That was not, however, my personal experience. When I was a kid, my grandma lived in a small town, and the keys to her DeSoto were always to be found above the driver side sun visor. Many General Motors cars of that period used an ignition switch that made use of the key optional. If you worried about people taking your car, you turned the key to “lock” before removing it. If you lived in my grandma’s town, you removed the key in the “On” position and could thereafter operate the switch without a key, thanks to the helpful design of the switch which included a collar easily turned by the fingers. Oh for those simpler times.

Many cars that are newer and more expensive than mine give you a key that almost never leaves your pocket. At least I could lock and unlock my doors after my key’s chip went incommunicado. I may not be so lucky with my next car.

The key point here is that, as always, complexity comes at a cost. Fortunately, that cost was less than the perpetually decreasing figure that would make the repair uneconomic, thus sending the poor old car to its reward. That would have left me on my keyster, wondering what to do next. Which would have been a real keypunch in the gut.

28 thoughts on “The Key is . . . The Key?”

  1. I was very happy when I bought my 2020 KIA Soul, that all I got was a regular key. I did not want to join the group of people that had very expensive keys with programmed chips on the key, or some sort of RF that was sensed by something in the dash board. Then I found out that mine was easy to steal by just jamming a screw driver, or of all things, a USB thumb drive into the slot. Of course, mine was not easy to steal because it was a manual transmission, and I started using a club, but that wouldn’t stop illiterate imbeciles from breaking the window and screwing up the steering column before realizing they couldn’t drive it. I got a recent software upgrade when getting an oil change, that the car won’t start without sensing an actual key in the slot all the way to the bottom, but ditto to above, it wouldn’t stop people from breaking in and messing it up before realizing they couldn’t drive it. Someone was interviewed on local tv recently, that had all the software upgrades, and window stickers saying such, but someone still broke in, screwed up the whole key/column area, and walked away, leaving a car the owner couldn’t drive either, and 3k worth of damage to the system. A pox on all these criminals!

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    • The thought occurred to me that we are all being forced into inconvenience and expense because of society breaking down all around us. I am coming to the conclusion that our juvenile justice system was designed for a population of juveniles that either does not exist anymore or exists in very small numbers compared with those who commit most of the crime today. The longer this goes on, the more drastic the backlash in the criminal justice system when it finally happens.

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      • In my community, the DA is being accused of creating our current nightmare of crime, by not jailing criminal youths. There are people walking around with three and four felony convictions, who were not jailed or punished, and walked right out of court, and stole more cars immediately for joy riding and mowing over others on the road, including speeding through red lights and totaling cars. In some cases, being responsible for vehicular homicide. No one knows who is letting the DAs office do this, and neither liberals or conservatives are backing this policy!

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      • More cities than yours seem to be dealing with this. There seems to be a group of people who sincerely believe that if policing went away, everyone would live happily ever after. I don’t understand that view, but there seems to be more that I don’t understand every year.

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  2. I’m happy that all of our 7 family vehicles have an actual key, like the ancient Romans I don’t have to rely on Faraday bags to keep the vandals from stealing my chariot.

    How annoying to have your key suddenly retire. A friend of mine had that happen to his Honda motorcycle whilst on a week long trip, necessitating a trip to the dealer and a couple of days waiting for parts. This same machine also had the odometer freeze when it got to 99,999km, so he switched to miles until that froze as well. I guess Honda figured that a 900cc sportbike wouldn’t make it that far without crashing, but he estimates he’s got over 200,000km on it now.

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  4. When I was little, I had an old key fascination. Grandma P. lived in an old house in Millburn NJ–the kind where every interior door has a skeleton key, plus she had a lot of antique furniture and all of the drawers, cabinet doors, etc. had their own little keys. When you’re staying at Grandma’s, you’re bored because there’s nothing to do. So I got Grandma’s keys and found out which keys fit which doors (the keys were made by Corbin and were stamped P1, P2, P3, etc.). I drew a floor plan of the house and noted which keys locked and unlocked which doors, which was a lot of fun. Finally Grandma had enough and said, “Gimme those damn keys!” Well, that was the end of that game.

    After Grandma died in the late 1990s, I saved her key collection and I still use some of her keys in my own house today. Her house was sold, and later owners completely “remuddled” the place, covering the wood with vinyl siding, putting on additions, ripping out the old doors–even taking out STAINED GLASS WINDOWS and covering the openings with flat panels (Who DOES that!?) If Grandma’s ghost is haunting the place, she’s totally lost!

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    • I always thought those old keys were really cool, but never spent time in a house old enough for them to be commonly found. It is a crime what happened to your grandma’s house. What I find interesting is that while old houses from the victorian era into the 1920’s developed a big cohort of people who preserved fixtures and things so that you could find them in most big cities for restoration/rehab projects. There seems to be no such groundswell for midcentury homes. Instead, everyone just rips out the tiles and fixtures and pitches them in the dumpster.

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    • Yes, I hate to think what would have happened had I been a hundred miles from home. The sad thing is that I would trust the car for such a drive. But now I would want to be sure I had a spare key. Which I am reluctant to pay for.

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  6. What I think is interesting is there are more things than there are words to name them…
    My PT Cruiser has a key. I took my car to the dealership the other day for it’s annual check up. When I picked it up, the tech went to get the ‘key’ from the board that held all the key fobs to other vehicles in the shop. She carefully checked the tags on each fob in the first row. Then I said, “Just look for the tag that has an actual key…”

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    • I am starting to think that we are coming to the day when it will be more reasonable to rely on something from the 1960’s as everyday transportation than a 15 or 20 year old modern car. The old stuff is all mechanical and can be fixed. Or maybe I just lack the electronics skills necessary in the coming world.

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  7. I knew of a late model car, who delivered a message from the dash to the driver that the key was low on battery. So they got that changed. However, the message still appeared, so they tried the manual start method, which didn’t work either. This is in a keyless start car. Long story short, don’t believe the messages from the on board computer. The battery on the car needed to be charged or changed. Diversionary tactics the engineers have built into our cars nowadays.

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  9. My kinda post, J P. That’s an impressive list of “keys” start to finish (and if you could’ve found an emoji for each, you could’ve included an emoji key and saved yourself a lot of words). We had an Avis rental on a trip through Colorado last week, and upon returning it I noted a prominent sign which read, “Please leave vehicle keys with Avis or incur $450 replacement fee.” Those fobs – w/ or w/o chips – are not cheap! I’m still wary of push-button ignitions, even after owning an SUV with one for years. There’s that split-second fear each time where you wonder, “Is it gonna start?”

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  10. That was an expensive proposition in the long run JP. When I got my Buick LaCrosse in 2009, I got two keys and two fobs with it. Since I was the only one driving it, I shouldn’t have needed another key right? But I always had a third key which I used to carry in my wallet with a house key, just in case the keys were dropped, lost or stolen. Imagine my surprise, even 13 years ago to learn that I could not get a key cut at ACE Hardware, but had to buy it at the dealership, after producing a piece of paper with the bar code for around $100.00. I politely declined.

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      • Yes it was! I have to drag out my manual or search online for the car clock settings and write them down. I always had a cheat sheet in the Regal’s glove compartment. I like keeping things simple, so I don’t have to compute the time when I glance at the clock.

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    • After locking myself out of my Moms car on a date in high school, fifty-five years ago, I’ve always carried two car keys and apartment keys at all times! And I’m not that forgetful! Paid off when I locked myself out of my car, while it was running, in downtown Chicago one time!

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      • It’s a good practice Andy. I always did that and now, since I live alone and have no relatives or people I’d feel comfortable leaving a house key with, I always have a complete set of keys in a small case which I carry on me at all times. I no longer carry a purse, but use a fanny pack, so I put the keys in there or in a zippered pocket in my vest in Winter. Locksmiths are expensive; locking yourself out is inconvenient!

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  11. BTW, as long as we’re talking about keys here, I spent a day going down a rabbit hole a few months ago on YouTube, watching videos from the “Lock Picking Lawyer”! As advertised, a lawyer whose hobby is picking locks (and you were looking for something to do). He basically picks literally anything and everything in a matter of seconds, the difficult ones take a minute of two. Makes you rea.I’ve now unsafe we all are!

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