...Wait a Minute! ...Where ARE the Keys??!!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    The Educative Power of Travel!  That's the Key!         

                           ...Wait a Minute!  Where ARE the Keys??!!...

This is a Story about a Geezer and Some Keys," but first one must set the scene, replete with shifting moods and geography, how the fleeting space of seven days can push the sun behind dark clouds, turning blissful moments into raging storms!  

A view of Playa La Ropa in "Zihua."

In the Sunshine!  We're seated at La Cala, a superb restaurant in Zihuatanejo.  Calm ocean waves tumble over a stony shoreline, arriving as the sound of crinkling parchment or the muffled crunch of tires on gravel.  Our waiter admires my camiseta auténtica Mexicana (authentic Mexican shirt), and asks if we could trade, his for mine.  I demur, insisting that I had just purchased the thing.  It had the color and styling I'd wanted, having searched unsuccessfully on previous travels to Mexico.  Dialogue on other beaches, in other locations, conducted largely in Spanish, leads to more conversations with native speakers, shared laughter, friendships.

The richness of travel vs. tourism is just that, building relationships with indigenous people, sharing stories, lifestyles, histories, in special cases visiting their homes and workplaces.  It "breaks ice." That, and being muy chistoso (funny), as we attempt to navigate in Mexican Spanish, stumbling over and misusing words and phrases, entertaining our hosts and the native Mexicans we encounter.  Return trips, however, can induce melancholy.  The beauty and serenity of a tropical setting vanish; ahead lies "real life"-- business, anxiety, frenzied activity, impatience...  

Coming home from one's travels -- specifically returning from a somewhat recent trip to Mexico -- is not always "uneventful."  If I were sufficiently fluent, I'd share the entire story of The Forgotten Keys with Mexicanos, with certain nuevos amigos including a school teacher, Maestro Blanco, who gave us a tour of his classroom and with whom we enjoyed our time, stories, meeting some of his students as well.  He was most welcoming and had a fine sense of fun and a willingness to engage.  I find it hard to lose the image of his picturesque pueblo, the pleasant adobe-style school, warmth, palm trees, the ocean, the Sierra Madres...  But I digress...  

The Tale of the Keys Misadventure...  In many fine hotels, rooms include a safe in which one can store valuables.  I placed my auto and house keys in such a safe...   I think...  

Downtown Playa del Carmen at dusk.  Strolling along
5th Avenida is a daily pleasure for us when there!

The Homecoming:    When the aircraft’s wheels kissed the runway with a pleasant squeak, my wife and I looked at one another and announced in unison, as if cued by an unseen director, “Dodged another bullet!”  (A little tradition!)  We had landed safely following a delicious week-long holiday in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, replete with sunshine, delightfully warm weather, anxiety-numbing ease, fresh limes and avocados...  There was nothing left but to get through customs, claim our luggage and then retrieve our car, happily and inexpensively moored in a protected parking garage, the result of a nearby hotel’s “Park and Fly” policy.

A heavy travel sack on each of our backs, we walked the long, sterile corridors to reach our

point of re-entry into the United States.  After waiting three hours or so in a seemingly endless queue -- 16 of 20 immigration officers having called in sick or stranded as a result of torrential rains in and near Chicago, O’Hare International Airport and their environs -- we collected our luggage and finally climbed aboard a van bound for our hotel and its next door parking structure.  

  

It pained us to leave 80-degree weather in the “Mayan Riviera,” but forecasters assured us we’d experience 60‘s in Chicago.  “Not that bad,” my wife conceded, “Sort of like exiting a steam room into a Swedish spring.”  We dragged our luggage behind us through puddles and a gentle but persistent rain, took the elevator to level three and then, blissfully, beheld our waiting vehicle.  “Ah,” my wife said, obviously relieved and happy, “we’ll be home in a couple of hours.”

Lockey Us!  That’s not exactly how things developed.  I set my backsack down, crouched beside it and began to rummage through its many pockets, one of which I was certain held a keyring containing our car, house, post office box, garage and other keys.  I searched until my face glowed red with frustration and anger.  No keys.  “I saw them on the hotel dresser, in a tray, where you always put them when we travel places,” my wife insisted.  

“I don’t have them,” I groaned.  “Did we leave them in a drawer, the safe, somewhere else?  Were they stolen?”  

“You must have them.  I saw the keys on the dresser,” my wife said with growing exasperation.

“They’re in Mexico!”

“What do you mean, 'in Mexico'?”

“I don’t have the damn keys,” I said, followed by a string of expletives.  “I’m certain I left them, or they were stolen, or they’re in that damn closet, in the safe!”  

Convinced I had lost the keys, been victimized by a thief or had “hidden” them somewhere “safe,” I roared with anger, aimed at myself for having done something so completely idiotic, adding selected curses hurled at the fates, nature, rainfall, climate, the jet stream...  

“I could swear I put them in the goddamned sack!”  I knew, of course, that nothing I could say or do or scream would miraculously reveal those miserable damn keys.  They were gone, irretrievably lost somewhere in Mexico. “Probably in the hands of some damn thief who, I hope, will roam endlessly through parking lots looking for a car that isn’t there!” I said, trying to convince myself and my wife, inanely, that we were the victims of a real or imagined bandit.  I couldn’t possibly be so careless, irresponsible or so outrageously stupid!   

    

Finally, my remarkable wife, exuding calm and reason, said, “C’mon, let’s go back to the hotel lobby and figure out what to do.  We can’t get into the car.  The keys are lost; they’re gone.  Today’s Thursday; we’ll come back early tomorrow, and you’ll still have Friday afternoon and the weekend to catch up on your work.”  Being self-employed, obsessive compulsive as well, I agonize over such things.  

We walked back to the hotel lobby, hauling our luggage though familiar puddles, rain and dropping temperatures.  The lobby was jammed.  My wife said, “We’ll get a bus to Milwaukee, and then come back here tomorrow with our spare set of keys.  Start calling bus companies.”  I did.  After several calls, I discovered the timetable of the last bus on the planet bound for Milwaukee.  I launched into another tirade condemning bus companies, commercial transportation in general, anyone who wears a stupid-looking uniform hat and may or may not be employed as a damn foolish unavailable snot-nosed jerk of a bus driver.

My wife, meanwhile, had struck up a conversation with a saintly young woman engaged in providing generous and loving care to her aging, needy, wheelchair-bound 80-plus-year-old father.  Wisely -- as my wife and I were both too agitated to think properly -- the woman suggested, “Why don’t you call a locksmith.  There’s probably one right here in Rosemont.  Probably cost you 75 bucks, maybe $100.00 at the most.”  

“Why the hell didn’t I think of that,” I silently raged within the confines of my addled brain.  I called a locksmith.  The dispatcher told me we’d see the capable young smith within a half hour.  Two and a half hours later, Iggy shows up, his little grey van proudly emblazoned with the name, “Lockey You.”   We hauled our luggage and ourselves back to the parking structure, met Iggy and his van and Iggy went to work on our vehicle.

“Iggy,” I said, “You’re like a genie popped out of a gold lamp.”  

“Huh?”

“I can’t tell you how happy we are to see you,” I clarified.

“You’ll have no problem making a new key, from the VIN number, right?” My wife asked of Iggy.  

“You kiddin‘, ” said Iggy.  “I can break into any vehicle and cut a new key, anywhere, anytime.  No problem; never had a single problem breaking in and cutting a key.”  We were buoyed by Iggy’s extravagant self confidence.  

Forty-five minutes passed.  Iggy was working away in his van, his aura of confidence vanished.  The temperature had dropped like an overly ripe coconut falling from a palm tree.  (Tropical images still haunted my musings -- probably a sanity and self-preservation mechanism -- as I shivered in the gathering darkness; my wife wisely wrapped herself in a blanket and sat in the van.)  Iggy finally broke into our car using a special secret device only locksmiths possess.  A working key was still nowhere in evidence. 

   

He somehow prised up the trunk release lever, then gained access through the trunk into the driver’s seat by means of the back seat release and his own youthful agility.  He cut a key, tried it; it didn’t work.  Tried again...  The headlamps began flashing crazily as the horn honked a staccato repetition of seemingly endless, irritating noise.  I was certain the Rosemont police would arrive and start shooting, or at least drag us off in handcuffs to the local lock-up.  They never arrived.  I uttered to no one in particular an inane comment about the obvious lack of protection afforded the local rustics. 

    

Iggy tried again, and then again and again.  The key would not work.  The lights flashed, the horn blared maddeningly, over and over.  The car battery was nearly dead.  Rage exploded in my brain like land mines.  The key didn’t work in the doors or the trunk or the ignition.  “What da...  This never happened to me before in my whole locksmithing life,” said Iggy.  “I don’t get

it.”  My wife and I dumbly smiled our encouragement.  I raised a thumb.  “I don’t get it,” Iggy repeated.  He squirted WD-40 into the door locks, into the trunk lock, into the ignition.  “What the hell,” said Iggy, “I don’t dig this.”  

Time passed; the cold remained, intensified.  Nothing worked.  Iggy finally admitted that something was seriously wrong with his key-cutting machine, or with our automobile, our karma, the machine’s karma.  “Hey,” Iggy said, shoulders shrugging, “Don’t know what the hell to do.  I’ll just have to come back tomorrow with a different key-cutting machine.  I’ll meet you back here at, say, 5:30 in the morning.  OK?”

We checked the time via cell phone, one of the few contrivances still alive in that cold and desolate parking garage, recognizing in horror that we had missed the last bus to Milwaukee, the 10:20 PM from O’Hare.  The hotel at which we had so recently planted ourselves to wait for Iggy was booked solid.  The nearby giant, popular chain hotel was booked solid.  It was nearing midnight.  “Oh well,” my wife said, “let’s just go back to the lobby.  I’ll start calling hotels to see if we can book a room for the night.  We’ll take a taxi.”  She locked and slammed the driver’s side front door of our useless vehicle.  I wanted to hit the thing with a lug wrench.  I couldn’t even enjoy that imbecilic, dubious satisfaction, the trunk being inaccessible.  And then we realized...  

  

“Oh shit,” I said.  “Iggy, we’ve locked your WD-40 inside our car.”  

“Oh shit,” said Iggy.  I need that stuff.  I got another job tonight.  Damn!”  He walked back to our car, our newly cut but apparently feckless key in hand, and stuck it into the driver’s side door.  It worked!  It opened the door, a miracle!  He tried the ignition.  It worked, but the battery had indeed died what with all that light flashing and beeping.  “I got a portable jumper,” said Iggy.  He started the car.  My wife and I would have leapt for joy if we’d had the strength.

“This is just great, Iggy,” I said.  “Serendipity.  If we hadn’t left your WD-40 locked in the car...  you might never have tried the key again.”

“Astonishing luck,” my wife said, beaming.  “WD-40.  You’ll buy some of that stuff first thing tomorrow,” she ordered me.  “It has healing power.”  

“How much do we owe you, Iggy?”  I asked.  

“Lemme see now.  If I’d a hadda give you a key -- been able to, that is -- with a locking and unlocking chip,” it woulda been a lot more than this.”

“How much?”  I asked again.

“This’ll run you $528.00 complete.  Not that bad, eh man?  I’ll send you a receipt by Email, if you want.  What’s your Email address?”

My eyes were poker chips.  Shock seized and held me in a gigantic, keyless vault.  I was temporarily rendered speechless.  “Uh,” I finally said, distractedly, “I’ll write it down for you.”  

“You should call your insurance guy,” said Iggy.  “Bet you’ll get all of this back.  I mean, it was real emergency.  Stolen or lost keys and all.  You’ll recover the dough.”  He gave us his business card and said, “Hey, you’re only two hours away, gimme a call anytime.  I’ll take good care of you.”  

I looked at the card in my palm, and quietly mouthed, "Lockey You."  If I'd had a match I'd have burned the card!  

  

We said our goodbyes, not quite as warmly as our hello, Iggy having dented the hell out of my debit card.  At last we were on our way home.  The journey north, back to Milwaukee started out well.  It didn’t end well.  We had to follow at least five detour routes owing to flooding and the consequence of closed roads and highways.  At one roadblock -- made necessary by a nearly drowned, impassable bridge -- a policeman instructed us.  “Go that way on Wiggin, left on Pitmore...  uh, try to follow that road...  uh, what’s it called?  Anyway, it parallels 294.  You’ll find it.  There’s probably a freeway entrance along that, uh... whatchacallit...  parallel road.”  It was almost 2:00 AM when we reached a truck stop just west of a Racine exit.  We were both starving after 15 hours without nourishment.  My wife’s burger and fries, my three-egg omelet and hash browns were like an aristocrat’s feast, sumptuous and satisfying.

*******************************************************

Friday in Milwaukee was about 40 degrees down the temperature scale compared to that of the Yucatan Peninsula.  We were gleeful, however, having searched for and found our spare set of keys, enabling us to begin the day’s activities, following a night’s sleep that was nearly comatose, uninterrupted and blissful.  We turned the key in the ignition.  It started.  Quickly the engine died.  We tried the key a few more times, repeatedly encountering the same engine shut-down, concluding at last that the new key, Iggy’s key, was the only one that had been re-coded to function properly.  I cursed technology, locksmithing, Iggy and the modern auto industry.  

We made an appointment with our dealership for the following Monday.  Approximately $140.00 later, we had two working keys, properly coded to open doors, operate the vehicle and even provide remote, keyless entry and locking function.  One exception; the trunk latch never worked again.  The service department found a nail in our tire and only charged us $50.00 extra to make the repair.  And Iggy was right, our insurance company came through.  Initially they offered us $28.00, the amount that surpassed our $500.00 deductible, finally handing over a whopping $50.00 reimbursement check.  Turns out we had added towing coverage to our policy.  “Gosh,” I said to my brave, smart and imperturbable wife, “We’re a couple of lucky stiffs, aina?” 

(Special Note -- Dedication with Gratitude:   The perpetrator of this Blog extends a special Thank You to Two among the people he loves best in the world, both of whom made their first appearances during the month of June, the 6th and 29th respectively, but some years ago!  You've brought great joy and humor into my life, and helped me maintain a healthy appreciation of absurdity and silliness!  Happy Birthday to you both!  My profound thanks for your love and understanding, for your generosity of spirit, your accomplishments, most importantly for yourselves!  With unqualified love, and hugs too!)

Humbly Submitted 06-06 / 29-15 -- Joel K.