Arvin Cowboy
Life in Rural Arvin in the 50's
Real Name: David L. Norris Gender: male Member Since: June 17, 2007 Last Signed In: April 21, 2009 Profile Views: 410 Blog Views: 1518 Walking to the Library Mr. Barle and the Hearing Aid Trick-or-Treat The El Rancho Theater The Law of Supply and Demand The Contact Lense Locking your Doors Arvin's First Community Center The 500 yard Dash Accident Momma and the Pillsbury Poppin Biscuits July 07 August 07 September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 November 08 December 08 January 09 February 09 March 09 April 09 May 09 June 09 July 09 August 09 September 09 October 09 November 09 
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Locking your Doors
In the 1950’s, Arvin was a very nice place to live. Everyone knew and trusted each other. By keeping a simple ear out, you could hear clear across town. You could tell where your friends were playing, whose parents were having a fight, or measure the progress if someone was coming over to your house to pick you up in their car, by going outside and sit on your porch stoop. You would hear the car start, back out, drive – shifting gears and increasing speed, stopping for stop signs and starting all over again following their progress with your ears until they turned onto your street and you first saw their car.
No one ever had to wonder where their car keys were. They were in the ignition key slot!! Why would anyone keep them anywhere else? Likewise, no one ever locked their house. My parents would leave for weeks at a time with our house totally open. We did not own any keys to our house. Upon returning, we would find all of the newspapers neatly stacked against one couch arm and all of our mail stacked against the other arm. The milkman had brought in momma’s half-and-half, butter and eggs, changing out anything that was outdated. Nothing was out of place. My parakeet and hamster were well fed and all was good with the world.
Arvin experienced its first wave of Big City Crime in the form of a cat burglar. A man so brazen that he was crawling into bedrooms on his hands and knees and was sneaking men’s wallets out of their pants pockets that were hung over their head post of the bed in which they were sleeping. Money out of women’s purses, all while the people were in their home. He would crawl through the houses and seemed to know where the women had their household money hidden.
One woman got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and came nose to nose with a strange man standing in her hallway. First, there was the blood-curdling scream and the man’s mad dash from the house. I doubt if either of them still needed to visit the bathroom. Finally, the burglar was caught and prosecuted, but Arvin’s innocence was over for good. The man could have made out better on a door lock sales commission program than he could have on any of the money he netted out of those poor men’s wallets.
My friend Dwight Ratliff lived with his parents in the second house on the west side of Morton Place. An Harry Swanson development of 10 houses, plus his own family house on the North end. To save money, there were only two house blueprint designs. One night Dwight came home in his convertible around 3 am, about three sheets to the wind, dead drunk. He always parked his car in front of his house. He got out, slamming his car door. As he stumbled around, fishing for his house keys, he became disoriented, turned and walked across the street to the house of Lillian Hughes who was a widowed friend of my mother’s.
He stuck in his key, unlocking the door and stumbled right in. In the dark, and being heavily intoxication, he did not notice the differences in furniture also since the house floor plan was the same; he found his way down the hallway to his bedroom. He sat heavily onto the bed and began taking his shoes off. Lillian awoke to the sight of a man sitting on the edge of her bed in the dark. She screamed and reached for her pistol that she kept in the nightstand. Dwight, still not sure, what was going on and why there was a strange middle-aged woman in his bed, panicked and ran from the house wearing only one shoe. I do not think either of them needed to visit the bathroom either.
Dwight stayed hidden over at his house, while my mom and several other women went over to Lillian’s house to see what was wrong. Finally, the police arrived. By this time, Dwight was Cold-Slap sober. The police were first sure they had nabbed some kind of perverted rapist until they checked out his story and tried his key in Lillian’s door lock and sure enough it opened her door. They retrieved his shoe and on the promise that he would stay at home and go to bed, they did not arrest him.
In order to save money and minimize the quantity of keys necessary to give to all of the subcontractors performing all of the work tasks necessary to build a house, all of the houses door locks had the same key and these door locks had never been changed out. The following day the police came back and everyone started comparing keys and found that out of the 11 houses, only two of the individual owners had thought to change out their own door locks themselves. Dwight had his 15 minutes of fame and the gossip circles literally burned up the phone lines talking about Lillian’s adventure. For a long time, when anyone met, the first thing they did was to compare their keys, to see if they had the same set as the next person.
The End
4 comments from 4 users
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posted by
Sloigo
on Aug 20, 2007 at 10:00 PM
Times have definately changed. I don't think anyone in Arvin leaves there doors open any moe either from the look at the police blotter out of their local paper that I subscribe to.
posted by
NancyII
on Aug 20, 2007 at 10:00 PM
We had skeleton keys. There were different sizes of those keys but they'd unlock most doors anyway. I was a coward so If I felt the need for extra security, I'd run a knife behind the door trim with the handle across the door. We also had latches with the little slide bolt that wouldn't keep a kid out let alone a burgler. I doubt we locked the doors in the daytime but did at night as my dad worked nights a lot and we lived out in the boonies. posted by
robbwillis
on Aug 21, 2007 at 08:15 AM
Another sign of more innocent times was when my dad went out at night to confront a "prowler" in the neighborhood. Kind of bold even then, he would be considered, justifably, insane these days.
posted by
woofwoof
on Aug 21, 2007 at 09:35 AM
Always a good read. I've had skeleton key door locks too Nanc, in my first apt. in the suburbs of Chicago, I always thought they were so cool. Of course, my grandma's house was that way too, in Mankato, MN. spam code: JLIKE
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