Church key anecdote

[Barbara Need]

I would have to say that the unmarked form for me has both ends
(Cleveland, north of Boston, Phila, Milwaukee, Chicago). My current
use for it would be as a bottle opener; my more usual use for it as a
child in Cleveland would have been  as a can opener (I don't remember
drinking canned juice in Andover, MA). But the visual I have when I
ask for a church key has both ends.

Barbara

>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