Georgetown Train Trip

       “Where are the keys?”

     “I don’t have them.  You were driving.”  And so she was.  It was a nice summer day.  The Goodwife decided upon an outing to get me away from the farm.  Following our visit to the mine train ride near Georgetown, we would take in a meal at one of the Blackhawk casinos.

      We had “won” that meal at a charity auction in our rural Kansas community.  Someone donated the two meals, which were then auctioned off, either by silent auction, or by traditional auction with an auctioneer.  The proceeds went to the sponsoring organization, probably Rotary club in this case.

      I don’t remember what we paid for the two “free” meals, but we had the certificate with us, and it wasn’t out of date.  It was in the car trunk.  Which was now locked.  The keys were where?

     The search through purse and pockets gradually grew more frantic.  I stood at the trunk of the Oldsmobile Aurora, waiting for the lid to pop so I could deposit my jacket, which I didn’t think I would need for a while on this nice summer day, even in the mountains.  “Are you sure you don’t have the keys?”

     Yes, I was sure.  Then a rather disturbing impression hit me.  The car was vibrating a bit, not the kind of vibration that neither the train nor the passing traffic would cause.  I bent down towards the tailpipe.  Yes, there was exhaust exiting the pipe.

     Then I could hear it.  The engine was still running, had been running for the past hour and a half while we bought a ticket, stood in line, boarded a train car and went on the run to the inactive mine that the old railroad had originally served, and back to the parking lot.

     In shock and disbelief, I rounded the left rear corner of the car, pushed between the Goodwife and the Aurora and peered through the driver’s side window.  Sure enough.

     The keys were in the ignition, the dash was lit, the car was indeed running.  “There are your keys,” I said pointing accusingly at the car window, through which we could see the key fob and the orange tube that contained a small screwdriver, chained to the ignition key. 

     For an instant, dismay was replaced by anger and accusation.  How many times had I told her, “Never lock the door with anything but the key.  If you do that, you will never lock your keys in the car”?  Well.

      I had tried to apply that practice with my mother’s S—15 GMC pickup.  It had the annoying habit of locking the doors when you closed one, as when getting out to let it warm up while you scraped ice off the windshield, or to get something you forgot.  Since it locked itself when you least expected it, following my rule didn’t work.  Maybe that’s why we didn’t practice the rule as well as we should have.

       Now was not the time to start an argument or reinforce a lesson not learned, in the parking lot with the Aurora’s engine running, our only keys in the ignition of the locked car.  Back to dismay.  How would we get into the car?  All the while, the car sat there idling.  Was it overheated?  No, it didn’t smell like it, no sign of steam or excess heat escaping from under the hood. 

     I headed across the parking lot towards a creek.  “Where are you going? asked the Goodwife. 

     “To find a big rock.”

     “What for?”

     “To break through the window.”

     “Oh, don’t do that.” 

     I stopped.  On my way back to the car, I asked, “You have a better idea?”

      “Maybe there’s a locksmith somewhere.”  Back down to the gift shop—ticket office.  The man commiserated, said the closest locksmith was in Evergreen, an hour or two away.  We would have to pay mileage as well as time to and from.

     I weighed the cost of the locksmith with the cost of replacing the driver’s side window.  The rock idea sounded better, especially when I considered the amount of time involved, instant gratification versus waiting for the locksmith to arrive.

     Then the ticket agent—sales clerk said, jokingly, “What you need is a kid with a clothes hanger.  He’d get in there for you.”

     Hmmm.  The Aurora was a hard top, so there was this big gasket between the front and rear windows.  A stiff wire would go in there easily.  Maybe I could hook the door lock with the clothes hanger.

     “I don’t have a kid, but do you have a clothes hanger you could lend us?” I asked.  He looked around a while and finally did find a wire clothes hanger he said we could have.

     On the way back across the parking lot, I straightened out the hanger.  It was no task at all to get the wire between the two windows.  The car had theft-proof door locks.  After several attempts to hook the lock, I realized I’d never get a good enough hold on either the individual door lock, or the switch that controlled all four door locks. 

      Finally, I eyed the window control switches.  That required a push to make a window go down, not a pull like the door lock needed.  After a few attempts, I finally had just the right bend to get the wire through the gasket between the two windows and to hit the panel of four window switches that were on a horizontal panel on the left door armrest.

     It occurred to me as I fished that it was a good thing the ignition switch was on, because the windows wouldn’t work if the switch were off.  Eventually, I managed to hit the left front window switch enough to make the window jump before my wire slipped off the little arm of the window control.  I still couldn’t get a hand or arm through the opening, but I had a lot more room to maneuver the clothes hanger.

     Success breeds success.  It was comparatively quick work to hit the window switch a couple more times.  Then I could get my arm in and grab the door lock.  We were in!

      I checked the gauges.  No sign of overheating from the extended idling period.  I popped the hood.  Nothing amiss under there.  Soon we were on our way.  Our 45-minute delay seemed a small price to pay for our error, when I considered the cost of a locksmith or replacing the left window.  The car seemed none the worse for the wear.

     We hadn’t quite learned our lesson.  There would be another event before we followed the advice of our local friendly used car dealer.  He advised us to have a spare key made and stow it between license plate and bumper, held fast out of sight by a license plate screw.  A coin can be used to remove the license plate screw to retrieve the spare key in an emergency.

     We didn’t do that, even after our experience.  It would take another event to convince me to go to the trouble of having the key made and to take the time to remove a license plate screw and stow the key.