Chatelaine’s Clubhouse Keys

by rosemary on 02/27/09 at 8:20 pm

My son, Ryan, is returning to the USA today and moving home to Spokane next week. He has been teaching English and American culture to preschoolers and Kindergartners in Japan and Korea since June 2005. Yesterday I went to the hardware store to get an extra house key made for him. While I was there I saw these colored key rings.

Chetelaine's Keyring

Two years ago I took on the house superintendent job at the Spokane Woman’s Club. I was given a few [4 or 5] keys on a ring. I found a big 3” inch key ring for the clubhouse keys that was easy to grab with my arthritic hands. I thought I was set. My spouse, Phil, and I decided to map and chart the clubhouse locks. Trying the keys in many various rocks revealed that the set of keys I had was very incomplete. After extensive rooting around in the clubhouse office, hours of trial and error putting keys in locks, and then gaining the trust of some suspicious members who had sole copies of keys, I had an almost complete set. The key ring was evolving.

We have long term renters with storage closets off the main stage, and I found that I had to acquire copies of their keys too. One summer day there was a wedding. The Folklore Society of Spokane had left their storage closet unlocked. A wedding guest, arriving directly from the airport via taxi put her suitcase, purse with ID and cell phone in the that closet. Someone from the FSS came in during the wedding, put something away in the closet, locked it, and left. Well, I got a call about 10 PM that evening from the exhausted and desperate mother-of-the-bride complaining about the guest’s luggage. It was not a pretty scene, oh my, but dealing with renter psychology is a subject for a different blog day.

The stranded guest was a librarian who had flown in direct from a conference on the east coast. She was going to stay with a friend of a friend in Spokane that she had never met before. Her only contact information for that person was …locked in the FSS closet. I made many phone calls and could not find a soul from the FSS to come in and unlock the closet that night. It was 11 PM and the wedding party was out-of-there. Guess who got to house a very nice librarian that night in her guest bedroom? She was very sweet and insisted on making a donation to the Woman’s Club. [Maybe I should start a Bed and Breakfast for stranded Woman’s Club guests as a fundraiser] Yes, I need a key to every door and cupboard in the clubhouse.

Finally, I had to fire the clubhouse janitor. And change out the main exterior clubhouse locks immediately. That’s when I made the discovery about how many people had keys to the clubhouse [most of whom should not have had keys at all]. The three adjectives to describe the now thwarted ex-keyholders angry, sheepish and relieved. But that too is another story. Now I have a complete set of keys.

Before I went to the hardware store for Ryan’s key I was choosing the right key off my chatelaine’s key ring by feel, appearance and position on the multiple interlocking key rings. It was time consuming to find the right key when a third of the 24 keys are identical in appearance except for the cut edge. The evolution of the clubhouse key ring continues. Today, thanks to Ryan’s homecoming, the keys I use most are color keyed. Last night, I did a midnight prom party close out at the clubhouse. I saved at least 10 minutes using my newly marked keys. Thank you for coming home Ryan, I got to bed a little sooner last night because of you.