The keyhole bottle opener is one of those relics one finds lying around the cottage, along with manual automobile cranks, phonographs, and people like me, human relics over 50 years old whose sole purpose, besides paying the bills, is to be roused from the hammock to explain what the arcane bit of obsolete technology might be.
The keyhole bottle opener has had limited practical use since the advent of the twist cap, but it was not always so. William Painter developed the crown cork cap in 1892, the new way to seal a beer bottle, and the canny businessman also developed the “crown seal bottle lever,” a.k.a. the keyhole bottle opener, to help us get at the suds inside. Why “keyhole”? The implement looks like an old-fashioned key hole, but more important is its metaphoric quality: it once held the key to bottled beer, which is one of the ingredients of cottage bliss.
This relic remains useful in the relative wilderness of cottage country, where it can double as a sinker for fishing line, or a weight at the end of a string that needs to be thrown over a tree branch. If you are taken by a sudden desire to be a painter, you can hold it at arm’s length and frame your wife’s face to make a portrait of her. If someone flirts with your wife as you are painting her, sight through the bottle opener to project the evil eye. Do the same at motorists speeding down your cottage lane. They will think you are holding a radar gun.
It is important to stress the usefulness of old things to the young, so that when our cheque-writing abilities begin to falter, they hang on to us in the same way that farmers hang on to old implements (the butter churn, the anvil, the string baler): you never know, they just might come in handy.
And in case the youth are not too keenly aware of your value, treat them to a six-pack of premium or imported beer, the kind that still uses crown caps. Watch them shred the tender flesh between thumb and forefinger, then reach into your back pocket and proffer the keyhole bottle opener. As they drink, cowed by your resourcefulness, take this chance to impart more wisdom: “Aye, and have I told you about the stubby beer bottles we used to have?”
This story originally appeared in our July/August ’05 issue.
Comic by Graham Roumieu
Related Story Keyhole lifejackets weren’t comfy or attractive, but they sure saved lives
Related Story The forbidden lawn dart still beguiles all these years later
Related Story Cottage Classic: Tang orange drink