Church key anecdote

[Dennis R. Preston]

I got little NC experience, but my KY life from darn close to Jim's
would have the crown top opener as the unmarked form.

dInIs



>My experience from KY and NC during the 50s and 60s agrees with Wilson's.
>Church keys opened beer cans (as well as other cans, like fruit juice cans,
>but those were unimportant) before they had pull tabs. The opening was
>triangular; the other end often had the rounded crown opener.  In fact,
>there were some fairly fancy ones intended to be attached to key chains.
>There is an obvious oxymoron here, but I wonder if the triangular shape is
>part of the metaphor?
>
>Jim Stalker
>
>Wilson Gray writes:
>
>>On Feb 24, 2005, at 8:02 PM, sagehen wrote:
>>
>>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>-----------------------
>>>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
>>
>
>
>
>James C. Stalker
>Department of English
>Michigan State University


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu