h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We narrowly survived moving into our first house on the 30th of September. It's in Jackson, Michigan, but forgive me if I don't tell you precisely where. A really good, devoted stalker will be able to find me without that much help.

I have a million things to tell you about the experiece (whoever you may be reading this), but not enough free time to ramble about it. I'll just drop the coolest detail first, then later you can read my lists of improvements I need to make on the house, and items left behind by the seller, and fascinating stuff like that.

Here's the cool detail. The house was built in about 1937 (if the latest owner has his info correct). It has a lot of hardwood floors, old windows with counter-weights in them, furnace grates that may be older than my mother, an antique freezer in the basement (circa 1960s?) and best of all, door locks with those classic keyholes to fit skeleton keys. Five doors inside the house plus the back door all have that kind of lock on the door.

The bathroom has no other means of locking, so my wife suggested we install a regular bolt & latch lock. But I started wondering if we could get a locksmith to recreate the skeleton key. This idea has been playing through my mind for two days as I wandered through the house, moving boxes and furniture in, thinking of all the other projects that should get higher priority than paying someone to create a skeleton key. How much would that cost? It would involve a house call. For all I know, it might be a lost art. Maybe no modern locksmiths worry about those kinds of keys anymore.

Today I happened to bend down to one of the heating grates in our bedroom. The grates are not secured to the floor, just resting in place, so you can pull it up easily to retrieve lost cuff-links or thumbtacks. Resting there in the duct, between the dirt and the dimes and the dustbunnies, I found a single skeleton key.



It doesn't get any better than that. I ran around the house trying the key in all the doors. It works on all of them except the back door and the door to the basement, both of which look like they were painted over, and like they might work if I fiddle with them long enough and work the paint out from the bolt.

(Advice for stalkers & burglars: just because the skeleton key doesn't work in my back door, doesn't mean it's the only lock on that door.)

So that's why I've been absent from my usual haunts the last few days, and may continue to be in coming days or weeks.