Church key anecdote

[Wilson Gray]

On Feb 24, 2005, at 8:02 PM, sagehen wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Church key anecdote
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
>> 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.
>  ~~~~~~~~~
> AFAIK, it was a widely-accepted term everywhere I've lived (Midwest,
> West,
> Northeast). It only applied to the specialized opener of crown caps, I
> think.  Not the kind that punches a triangular hole in a can top, or
> that
> pries with a little hook.When I was last a beer drinker (had to give
> it up
> because of allergy to malt) bottlers were using a kind of crown cap
> that
> could be unscrewed.  Maybe the church key has simply become obsolete?
> A. Murie
>
> A&M Murie
> N. Bangor NY
> sagehen at westelcom.com
>

In my lost youth, "church key" referred specifically to the tool that
punched a triangular hole in a beer can. This was the case in St. Louis
in the 'Fifties, and 'Sixties. Some models were double-ended, with the
other end designed to open the crown caps of bottles. The suggestion
that this tool has been rendered obsolete by pull-tabs and twist-off
caps makes perfect sense to me.

-Wilson Gray