church key 'beer-can opener' is obsolete

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Why would one need an opener for a beer can? Today they are all self-opening, 
and have been for decades.

If people under 40 do not know the term, it seems likely that this is because 
the expression has died out because the word is no longer necessary. 
Moreover, in the context that mcgraw describes, even I, who recall the word fondly 
from my youth in Iowa, would have been quite uncertain what he was asking me for.


In a message dated 2/24/05 5:45:38 PM, pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU writes:


> A few years ago there was a discussion in this cyberspace of "church key"
> as slang for a bottle opener.  I had never heard the word until I went to
> grad school in Wisconsin, where I heard it all the time.  Nonetheless the
> consensus on ads-l seemed to be that it wasn't a regional expression--a
> judgment that seems to be confirmed by its absence from DARE.
> 
> Well, the other night I was at a poker game (which we call "choir practice"
> in the messages we exchange via the college e-mail system in the process of
> organizing a game).  At some point I figured it was time for a beer, and
> finding nothing in the host's kitchen to open it with (and possibly
> influenced subconsciously by the fact that this was, after all, choir
> practice), I asked him if he had a church key.  My question met with blank
> stares all around--nobody had the slightest idea what I was talking about.
> So this scientific sampling of seven guys demonstrated 100% agreement that
> the expression was unknown in the Northwest.  FWIW, all but one of the
> seven are in their 30s, and I think most of them grew up somewhere in the
> NW.  One went to college in Michigan, and I think all the others went to
> Linfield.
> 
> Peter Mc.
>