When I was stationed at the Electronic Proving Ground at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, my family and I loved to travel to all of the local tourist attractions. Probably everybody recognizes the name Tombstone. Tombstone is a little mining town about 16 miles east of Fort Huachuca and Sierra Vista, Arizona. Tombstone gained notoriety with the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881. The town still does live reenactments of the shootouts that made the town famous, and there are still plenty of tours to amuse yourself with. People can visit the actual O.K. Corral, Boothill Graveyard, and the Birdcage Theater. After I lived in Sierra Vista for a while, I took for granted how close Tombstone was to Sierra Vista. Whenever relatives came to visit me, Tombstone was always on my list of places to go for at least a one-day outing. That became especially true the second time I got stationed at Fort Huachuca. Another place that I really liked to visit was Old Tucson and Old Tucson Studios. I first heard about Old Tucson from a friend of mine at work. He told me that it would be a great place to take my family on the weekend. As a result, one weekend, I planned a trip to Old Tucson and Old Tucson Studios in Tucson, Arizona. When we went to visit Old Tucson, the television series “Little House on the Prairie” was actively filming at Old Tucson Studios. Since we watched that television show on a regular basis, we wanted to tour that TV set. Additionally, we watched several cowboy gunfight reenactments. After a full day of activities, we were ready to go home. Both my wife and my daughter were very tired. Plus, we still had a long drive of over 70 miles to go to get back home to Sierra Vista. When we got out to the parking lot to where I had parked my red Chevy van, I reached into my pocket for the keys to the van. However, there was one small little problem. The keys were not in my pocket. I thought to myself, “Self, this is impossible. The keys have to be in my pocket.” So, I painstakingly took everything out of my pocket. Except, there was just one teensy problem. The pocket was empty. I pulled the pocket out from my pants just to make sure it was empty. You know. Cuz I couldn’t trust my hands to tell me the honest truth. The keys just had to be in my pocket. But when I turned the pocket inside out, it was empty. How in the hell could that happen? Someone must’ve stolen my keys. That’s it. Someone pickpocketed me and stole my goddamn keys. I yelled at my wife, “Somebody stole my keys! I don’t have them. Somebody took them right out of my pocket. Goddamn thieves.” My wife peered inside the van and started pointing toward the ignition switch. She had a funny look on her face like I was the biggest dumbass on the planet or something. So, naturally, I said, “What?” She simply said, “You locked the keys in the car. Nobody stole them.” “Oh. Well. That’s just great. Now I have to find a hanger.” “A hanger?” “Yeah. You know. A metal clothes hanger. That’s one of those things that they use to hang up clothes.” “I know what a clotheshanger is smart ass. What do you need that for?” “Well, you see how the window is cracked open here a little bit. I can use a hanger as like a metal fish line to reach down and grab a hold of that door lock right there to unlock it.” “Will that actually work?” “Of course it’ll work. Do you think this is the first time I’ve locked my keys in the car? Wait-a-minute. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to hear what kind of smart ass answer, you might give.” “Why? Do you think the truth will hurt?” “I can feel it stinging already.” Now, there is something you need to know about Tucson, Arizona in the summertime. The average daytime temperature is about 100 degrees. Out by Old Tucson and Old Tucson Studios, there are a lot of Saguaro cactus, but there aren’t many trees at all. Shade is very hard to come by when the hot afternoon sun is beating down on you. That is unless you are a lizard or a cockroach. If you are a lizard or a cockroach, times are good. There is lots of shade. It took me 15 or 20 minutes to round up a hanger. I asked most tourists who had recreational vehicles, but they wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Finally, I headed into Old Tucson and I asked at one of the tourist trap stores. One of the actors who had played a cowboy in the gunfight reenactments found a hanger for me. He asked me what I needed it for. I told him that I needed it to try to unlock my car because the keys were locked inside. He said that the police had a tool that could unlock the car for me, and he would call them. Meanwhile, I took the hanger and went back out to my car. There was no place for my wife and my daughter to wait in the shade while I attempted to unlock my car door. There simply was no shade. It took several attempts at bending the hanger wire and fishing for the lock knob only to miss and to make a few more bends to the wire. It took me about 45 minutes to get my van unlocked. By then, the parking lot at Old Tucson was just about empty. Just as we were getting into our van to leave, the police showed up to assist us in unlocking our vehicle. Great. The donut chasers were right on time. They were late to the party as usual. They circled the parking lot once and left. I guess they didn’t see any damsels in distress or people standing outside of their locked vehicles attempting to break into them. Long gone are the days since I have owned a vehicle where I could actually lock the key in the car. But I remember that very hot day in Tucson when I locked the keys in my red Chevy van. That was to be my last exercise in futility when it came to car keys locked inside of vehicles.
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