Keys to the Past

I am still going through the various bits and pieces of flotsam my grandfather left behind and today, I opened a small box that held, amongst other items, a bunch of keys on several key rings.

My grandfather owned the family business, the non-ferrous foundry, and because of that, he had a separate key ring with just "foundry-related" keys. I've not been to the foundry building in several years - it's been that long since my dad sold it and I helped him empty the building of eighty-four years of accumulated "stuff."

The keys in the very full key ring are worn and tightly bunched. I thumbed through them, thinking of each lock the key fitted, the front door, deadbolt, alarm box, fire-proof safe, supply closets, the men's lockers (which were never locked anyway, since the cleaning lady would take the dirty towels from them and wash them each week), the third floor roof access door, the side shipping door, the back door, the roll-up door, the lock on the oil tank cap, and so it went... I recognized most of them by their place in the ring.

...and then I hit two keys that put me in the way-back machine along with the bright flash and some magician smoke...

The foundry had a several "company cars and trucks". My grandfather had a copy of each vehicle's keys, and he had a hard time keeping straight which key fit which vehicle. So one day, he came into the office where my Dad and I were discussing rebuilding a furnace, as pleased as punch and he tossed this very key ring onto the big three person "army issue" steel desk and said, "There! I fixed that problem!"

My dad looked up, his feet up on the desk, and said, "What problem was that?"

My grandfather replied, "You know how the key for the Oldsmobile Toronado looks a lot like the one for the orange-brown pick-up truck? Well, I took out the metal letter stamps and stamped a letter on each of those keys so I could tell them apart! After three months of fooling with them...I got a 5 minute fix that will save me hours of time!"

My dad reached over to the keys and thumbed them - much like I was doing in the here and now, and grunted loudly and rolled his eyes when he came to these two keys...

He tossed me the key ring and said, "Well, what do you think?"

I looked at the two keys and saw that my grandfather had stamped one key with a "T" and the other one with an "O" and without thinking about the ramifications of what I was saying, blurted out, "How the heck do I know which is which??!? O for Oldsmobile and T for Truck?"

And my grandfather looked at me with a baleful glare and said, "No! of course not!! its O for orange-brown pick up and T for Toronado! Jeepers! I'm I the only one that can think in this place!??"

He then turned around and stormed out of the office into the backroom.

My dad looked over to me and said, "Betcha he gets them mixed up the very first time he uses them."

To which I said, "No deal," and broke out laughing.

Sure enough, that evening when it was time to head home, my grandfather spent a few extra moments fiddling with his keys at the door to the Oldsmobile Toronado... probably thinking, O? or T???

And I looked at those two keys and thought, "I wonder why he kept them? The Oldsmobile and the orange-brown pickup truck have been long, long gone...."

...but my memories of the keys are still with me.