To Lock Or Not To Lock?
Whaat? I thought, bewildered. Why in the world would anyone ask that?
That was my immediate reaction when Scott asked me the strangest question. He lived two doors down on our quaint suburban street in Binghamton, NY, where I attended the university for one semester back in the 1970s. It was a quiet street, off the beaten path, with single family and multi-unit homes interspersed with no apparent rhyme or reason in the planning.
That was the first time I met Scott. We had just pulled onto the block at the same time, and he parked right in front of me on the street. I had a late model Toyota that burned as much oil as it did gas. If you lifted the car mat, you could see the road below.
Scott and I exchanged polite waves as we exited our cars, and then he took a step toward the walkway leading to his front door. Scott was brawny, sporting a lumberjack-look – open flannel shirt over a T-shirt, well-worn high-top work boots, and thick brown hair protruding every which way from under a baseball cap with a fishing logo,
As I reached to lock my car door, he paused and glanced ever so briefly in my direction. It was so quick that it would not have registered had he not then double backed in my direction. That’s when we exchanged names, followed instantly by his odd question:
“I noticed that your car door is always locked. Any reason?”
It took a second to process what struck me as so peculiar before I responded with a shrewd interplay of Shakespearian elegance and Aristotelian reasoning: “I dunno.”
“I’m just curious, no big deal,” he shrugged. “Just thought you might have some reason, that’s all.”
As strange as his question seemed, the way it was phrased revealed that it had been on his mind. After all, it wasn’t just that he saw me lock it at that moment but had taken note of it for the two weeks I had been living on the block. Geez!
“Well,” I stammered, fumbling for an answer to a question like Hey, I notice you breathe, any reason? And disregarding the creepiness factor that he’d been observing my behavior, I responded by taking his question at face value: “I guess I never even think about it. I just do it. Why? Is there a problem with locking the car?”
“Oh, no. No problem. Just wondering why?” he asked, his tone far more curious than demanding.
“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t lock the car. Ever. In my neighborhood in Queens, the car would be gone within 5 minutes if it wasn’t locked.”
“Ah, makes sense,” Scott conceded. “I grew up around here and nobody ever locks their cars.”
“You’d lock it if you lived in my neighborhood. The area is safe, but it’s congested, tons of cars, so sometimes they or any stuff inside gets stolen,” I explained. “And by the way, locking the door is the least we do. Some people put locks on their steering wheels, these big rods that make it impossible to drive. Thieves see them and won’t even bother trying to break in. And one time the trunk on my dad’s car was broken into, so he had a safety lock put on the trunk.”
“Wow, how do people live like that, worried their car is going to get stolen every day?”
“I never really think about it. We just take it for granted that you lock the car. But why aren’t you worried about that at all? Aren’t you afraid your car is an easy target?”
“I suppose, like you, I never thought about it. Never occurred to me it would be a problem. Certainly not around here, not on this street.”
“Yeah, but what if you go somewhere, like to a mall or a movie. Would you lock the car there?
“Sometimes. If I remember. But for the most part, probably not.”
I guess it all depends on where you grow up,” I replied, trying to give closure to a conversation I never imagined I’d be having. I struggled to grasp how something so seemingly inconsequential could be such a big deal to him.
The next morning, as I started on my 10-minute drive to the university, I peeked into the cars on the block. Back then, door locks were not on the inside panels of the car door, but were little knobs set on top of the door just inside the window. If they were up, the door was unlocked. I was taken aback by seeing all the cars unlocked.
When I returned home, I decided to keep the car unlocked overnight. It would be a new me, I vowed.
I got out of the car and found myself straining to resist the urge to press that little button down. It felt unnatural. And I had the simultaneous thought of how weird it is to devote this much mental energy to a matter teeming with insignificance.
Well, wouldn’t you know, I spent the night twisting and turning in bed with frightful visions dancing through my head that the car wouldn’t be there in the morning. Sure, that car was in bad shape and was held together more by rust than metal. But to me it was special. Not only was it a hand-me-down from my sister, whom I adored, but it offered a world of mobility that most of my friends at the university lacked.
The first thing I did when I woke up the next morning was bolt to the window to see if the car was still there. It was. Phew!
A short while later, as I left the house, there was Scott, bounding out of his house and heading in my direction.
“Good morning” he announced cheerily. “I see you left your car unlocked.”
Okay, okay, I thought, he’s a nice guy, but this obsession with my car being locked was bordering on bizarre.
“Yeah,” I acknowledged. “I figured I’d give it a shot. But I had disturbing thoughts all night that I’d seen the last of my car.”
Scott laughed. “I guess you can take the guy out of Queens, but you can’t take Queens out of the guy.”
“No more keeping it unlocked. I can’t afford any more sleepless nights.”
Two days later, as I was driving to school, I glanced into Scott’s car. To my astonishment, the button was down. Scott’s car was locked!
Same thing the next day. And the next.
I ran into him a few days later.
“Hey, Scott. What’s going on? I noticed you’ve been locking your car.”
“Craziest thing. I went to Pep Boys a few days ago for new windshield wipers. As soon as I walked in, right in the very front of the store was a display of those big steering wheel locks, the kind you told me about. I never noticed that before. So, now I’m curious and I asked the cashier how long that display had been there. You know what he told me? He said five years. It blew my mind. Five years! I go there all the time and never noticed it before. It’s only since our conversation. It’s like, all of a sudden, I’m programmed to think about car theft.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry to have brought you to the dark side.”
“But that wasn’t the end of it,” he confided animatedly. “That night I heard a weird noise. It sounded like cats digging through the garbage can. I must have heard that noise a million times. But it sounded different this time, and I couldn’t place why. Like it was louder. So, I’m thinking, maybe it’s someone trying to steal something. I looked out. Saw nothing. I couldn’t fall back to sleep. And then it hit me, maybe I’ll have some peace of mind if I lock the car door. Not only that, I mentioned this to Abe, you know, the guy who lives in that green house, and told him he should start thinking about locking his car too.”
I hadn’t yet met Abe. But I heard from a few other neighbors that he’s like the unofficial “mayor” of the block – always out chatting, knows everyone’s business, all the gossip. Every block in America has an Abe. What amazes me is how much they know about everyone since they do about 95% of all the talking in every interaction. Go figure!
The semester ended three months later, and I’d be finishing my final year of college back in Queens. As I drove down the block for the last time, my trusty rust-mobile loaded with suitcases, books, a record player and a few dozen albums, topped by the Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, and CCR, balanced with Joni Mitchell and Carol King, I peered into the cars parked along the block.
Amazingly, almost every car had its door locked! Had Abe and his deputy Scott spread the word? No doubt! After all, telling Abe anything was like shouting it into a megaphone.
As I headed toward Route 81, with Binghamton in my rear-view mirror and what was left of the muffler doing a pitch-perfect impersonation of a jackhammer, I began to realize that Scott’s obsession was not the door lock. Rather, it was the big transformation that the little door lock triggered. A little slice of the unadulterated trust Scott had in his surroundings was extracted and replaced by suspicion. His unmitigated sense of security was shaken, if just a little.
Scott was seeing the same things differently now, like noticing the Pep Boys steering lock display. He was hearing the same sounds differently, like maybe that the cat's rummaging was an intruder.
Scott’s mistrust antennae had been raised. And it struck me that once raised, it’s practically impossible to lower them. And somewhere deep within, Scott knew it.
I hadn’t thought about any of this for decades. But last year, we moved to a farm in New Jersey and our house is set far from the road beyond a
large horse pasture. It’s our little sanctuary and very safe, of course. But true to our roots, we installed a full security system. Cameras are mounted across the property – on every side of the house, in the barn, in the pasture, you name it. As soon as someone enters the property the system sends alerts, and we can track all their movements on our phones.
But you know what? We don’t lock our cars!
