It's easy to get all keyed-up these days

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a reprint of a column that previously ran in the Nevada Daily Mail.

How old were you when you first carried a key to your home? I was reading recently about the present day "latch-key children." These are the ones who arrive home before any of the adults in the family are present, so they wear a key on a string around their neck so that they can open up the door to their own home.

When I was the age of these children, the only key I wore around my neck was the key that fastened my roller-skates to the soles of my shoes. My mother was usually home when I got home from school, but if she happened to be out, the door wasn't locked anyway. This was in Washington, D.C., and even there, in the '30s and '40s, we didn't worry about theft or valdalism.

In the summers back in Vernon County, we only locked the house when summer was over and we headed back to Washington again. Then we locked the door with a big skeleton key. I don't remember who took the key with him then. I have a feeling that we merely locked the door and hung the key in a private "hiding place" until we returned the next year.

We did need a key to drive the car, however, but we had just the one key, which we put on the clockshelf when we were the ones who returned the car to our driveway. In Washington, we had a spot on a windowseat where we left the car keys between trips. In our large family of eight children and two parents, we only had one car, and only one set of keys. I don't remember any problems about scheduling the use of the car, but I am sure mu older siblings could come up with memories aobut that. By the time I was driving age, there were just two of us left at home, and we often went places together in the car.

Even after my parents retired back to the farm full-time, they didn't give us our own keys to our house. We could enter whenever we happened to be near. We each were told where a key was hanging and then could enter as we wished. By then, they had installed a different type of lock that required the smaller keys that we have today. But I don't remember the door's being locked unless they were off on a short trip someplace.

When I was in college, girls had certain hours they were required to be back in their dorms or rooming houses. The landlady was required to lock the doors at 10 o'clock Monday through Thursday nights, 11 o'clock on Sunday and midnight on Friday and Saturday. We had no keys of our own to our rooms or the house. If we needed to be out later than the prescribed hours, we had to have permission and the landlady would either leave the door unlocked or get up to let us in.

This happened to me after Lester was in service. I wanted to meet him when he came back on a short leave. The bus didn't get in before closing hours, but my landlady relented and let me meet him anyway. It turned out he missed the bus and wasn't on it, so I had to walk the darkened streets of Columbia alone at midnight. It was the only time I was ever frightened by being alone because some boys kept tailing me in a car and calling out to me. I was very glad to find an unlocked door when I reached Matthews Street.

Lester arrived very early the next morning.

Fast forward a generation and Lester and I lived in various houses with our four children during each stage of their lives. None of them can remember having a key to our home until they were old enough to also carry a car key. None of them had a car of their own until they had left home, but we did have several keys for the family cars.

The freedom to come and go while not being afraid to leave your possessions unguarded was just a natural occurance in my life until more recent years. I regret that my grandchildren will never have experienced such freedom. I know there must have been burglaries happening in those days, but I guess our neighborhoods weren't considered rich enough for any of us to fear being robbed.

Now I have a key for our car, for our truck, for several doors on the house, for the family house across the field and until recently also carried keys for the places where I worked. Since I now work out of my home, those keys are eliminated. Our kids do know how to enter our home if no one is here since they are quite a bit too old to be wearing a key on a string around their necks.

The freedom of my youth and early adulthood has been locked away in my memory. In reality, in these middle age plus years, I not only have the restriction of feeling I must lock things up, but I have a worse restriction.

When I get things locked up safely, I have trouble remembering where I put the key. Even when I know it is in my purse, I can have a game of hide and seek with myself as I rummage through the interior of my ample bag. This is particularly frustrating when a carry-out person from the grocery store is patiently waiting to load my food in the car. In my anxiety, I realize I need a Kleenex for a dripping nose. Then I find I had put my keys in my pocket and not in my purse after all.

Maybe I should get a long string for my neck.