At 09:00 AM 5/25/03 -0400, Fred Thomas wrote:
>.... in 1940 "sodas" were introduced in metal tin cans .... in 1960 easy
>open pop tops were introdcued www.cancentral.com, I have not as yet found
>the origin of "church key", ....
During the same time frame beer was also packaged in the same type of cans
(and still is, so to speak). If you drank beer out of cans you always kept
the can opener tool handy, maybe even in your pocket. If you happen to be
a habitual drunk, you might be homeless, live in the street, and
subsequently happen to frequent a local "soup kitchen" (or homeless
shelter), commonly operated by the Salvation Army (or some other religious
based organization). The common toll for this service (food or shelter)
was that you had to submit to a short church service and listen to words
about sin and rehabilitation. That small opener tool then was the key that
led you being there, so it was referred to as the "church key" (how you get
into the church). These were not kind words, more meant to berate the
drunks and to infer that they would not be in this situation if they would
just throw away the key.
Or it could just be the name of the bloke who invented the thing?
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
http://MGAguru.com
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