ACME Keyless Entry

It is 2013 and my principle automobile is a 1975 Toyota Land Cruiser. I’m sure that says loads about me, but I’ll leave you to your own interpretation. Whatever you think, and feel free to comment, it is the most interesting vehicle I have ever owned; no, not to me… to everyone else. I owned two Corvettes over a span of more than twenty years and as much attention as they got it didn’t come close the Land Cruiser. It is a rare day out that I don’t get at least one comment from a stranger and very often a bunch of questions.  People love to talk about my Land Cruiser.

I find this interesting because it is such a basic vehicle.  It is just a body bucket set on frame rails with a motor and drive train.  It might as well not have a radio, because it can’t be heard over the rattles and squeaks even at low speeds.  The people who designed it had no concept of air-conditioning.  The windshield is flat and man’s best attempt so far at eliminating the flying insect population. You have to use a key to unlock the doors for cryin’ out loud.

In 1994 I bought a brand spanking new Chevrolet Corvette; Admiral Blue (it was not purple) with a camel interior. It was fast! And it was well appointed with interesting creature comfort features.  I traded in my 1981 ’vette and by comparison it was like moving from a double-wide trailer in Lakeside into a luxury condo at the beach.

One of the most interesting toys was an automatic keyless entry system. This system was comprised of a motion activated mini-radio transmitter housed in a key fob and a receiver in the car. When the receiver sensed the radio signal emitted by the key fob, it would automatically unlock the door and disarm the security system. In the obverse, when the receiver no longer sensed the signal from the fob, say when the driver had exited the car and moved beyond the radio signal range (about seven feet), the system locked the doors and armed the security system automatically.

There were two fundamental flaws with this convenience. The first; you didn’t need the key fob in your hand to open the door and enter the car.  Until I learned to take my keys out of my pocket before entering the car, there was a lot of struggling to get my chubby hands in my pockets to extract my keys.  It was especially tiresome on weekends when I customarily wore Levis. The other pitfall was leaving the key fob in the car.  With no motion, the system assumed the driver, with key fob in hand, had moved beyond the transmit range and locked the car. About one week after taking the delivery, I had some minor warranty work done on the car.  When the lot boy brought the car out to the delivery area he left the keys on the seat, which was his regular procedure. Unfortunately, the doors locked with the keys inside. I called this to his attention and he assured me he could solve the problem.  He disappeared into the shop area returning shortly with a slimjim; a long thin flat piece of metal specifically designed for opening locked car doors. Said slimjim has a hook cut into the business end so it can be inserted into the door by sliding it between the window and the weather stripping. The operator then fishes around blindly until the hook engages the locking bar inside the door and with a quick jerk upward, the door lock is disengaged. “Stop!” was what I said, followed inside my head by, “or I will kill you if you damage my brand new weather stripping.”  The startled lot boy took a step back.  With imminent danger averted, I began to rock the car to and fro.  The motion activated the tiny transmitter sitting on the seat and, voila, the lock popped open.  “Well, I’ll be,” the lot boy uttered in amazement.  I added aloud, “No harm, no foul.” Followed silently in my head by, “Kiss your mother when you get home because she has no idea how close she came to losing a son today!”

Now I have shared this little story to set the stage for the first time I used a keyless entry system.

You may recall from a previous posting that in my youth I spent some time in the employ of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department as a Sheriff’s Cadet (if not, see A Rip in the Fabric of Time, posted February  14, 2013). Among my many duties in this position of high responsibility were running routine office errands. “Ho hum,” you say.  But I got to run them driving a real-life police car; when you’re nineteen years old stuff like that is a big deal.

As I recall it was a Friday afternoon; summertime. I noted that the station refrigerator was running low on canned soda pop. In Poway, the summer temperatures often get in the three digit range and the Deputies got surly if they could not quench their thirst with Shasta.  There was no air conditioning in the patrol cars in 1974.  The California Highway Patrol put air conditioning in their cars.  But the County of San Diego opted to spend its climate control budget elsewhere.

Granted this golden opportunity to get away from the hum drum of the office and out “in the field” for a bit, I collected the dimes from the soda replenishment kitty and grabbed a set of keys.  Of to the Alpha Beta I went. I picked out a nice selection of cut-rate sodas, chatted up the checker and deposited the cases of pop in the back seat of my “unit”.  So far my assignment had taken about fifteen minutes.

That afternoon, as with all afternoons, there were two Deputies on patrol duty in Poway. Trying to avoid a cumbersome technological treatise on law enforcement radio communications of the day, let me say it was very rare for the patrol deputies to communicate directly car-to-car rather than pass information through the central dispatcher.  So I was surprised to hear 42-1 (Poway unit, beat one) transmit over the “PL” frequency (no, I never did learn what “PL” stood for, but it let a guy in one car broadcast to all the other cars on that frequency) to 42-2 (yes, you guessed right, Poway unit, beat two), “Jack, there is something you will find interesting at the side of the road; Poway Road east just after the curve at Garden Road.”

As I was already outside, and no one had seemed to miss my presence in the office yet, I decided to mosey on over and see what there was to see.  En route, this was about a five minute drive, I noticed a classic 1960s Mercedes Benz 190 roadster ahead.  This was somewhat rare for Poway so I accelerated just a bit to get a better glimpse.  Pulling along side, I was greeted by brown hair flowing in the breeze, sparkling green eyes and a bright, inviting smile. We spent the next few hundred yards of Poway Road playing the speed-up, slow-down flirtation dance.

Approaching the curve at Garden Road, I sped up to change into the right lane ahead of her so I could pull to the side of the road in time to see whatever Jack was supposed find “interesting” and exit the car with an air of important attention to duty as she passed.

I came to a stop, turned on the rear amber flashing light (I’m important… I’m important…I’m important the blinker tick said) to warn approaching traffic that there was official business being conducted here; caution! I exited the unit and closed the door just in time to nod as she passed by, smiling.

I walked to the front of the car to see what all of the hubbub was.  And lying at the side of the road, not quite on the shoulder, lay a dead coyote that had obviously been struck by a car, a dead white rooster still clenched in its jaws.  Wyle E. Coyote had run off with Foghorn Leghorn and gotten run over by a truck. Now who says life does not imitate art?

Only a few seconds were needed to take in the rich tapestry of humor laid before me by Mother Nature. It was time to head back to the station before the Sergeant started wondering where I had gotten too. I reached for the door handle; locked! The motor was still running so there was no need to look, but I did. The keys were dangling from the ignition switch. Sweat began to bead up on my forehead. My stomach started churning. I was screwed!

“Stop! Breathe”, I told myself; “think, think… think.” Unproductive thoughts began to race through my mind, “Had Jack been by to see this yet or was he going to arrive any second and catch me stranded out her in sight of God and everybody? Had they missed me at the station?  Were they forming a dragnet to search for the absent Cadet?”

 I assessed my surroundings for opportunity.  Across the road was an old farm house (if you are familiar with modern Poway, this house has long since been removed); maybe, if someone was home, I could use the phone and call the station.  Then what? I would be the laughing stock of the entire Poway team.  There had to be another way. Yes, if someone was home, I could ask for a wire clothes hanger and pop the car door open.  I’d seen it done on TV!

I crossed the road and approached the front door. Oh, joyful sound, the door was open and through the screen door I could hear the television.  Someone inside was watching cartoons.  I knocked on the screen door frame; no answer.  I tried again, still nothing.  I peered through the screen but could see nothing in the shaded interior save the back of a couch and the top of the television. Something was amiss.

I pulled the screen door handle and found it unlocked.  I entered the house and approached the couch.  Seated there looking up at me were two tykes, a boy and girl, probably five and three years old respectively.

“Where’s your mom?” I queried.

“She’s at work,” the boy answered.

“Are you and your sister all alone here?”

“Yeah,” his innocent little face betrayed that this was normal.

I had to think about this for a minute. I had stumbled into what could be considered a child neglect situation.  On the other hand, I had severely overstepped the bounds of my authority as soda fetcher. This could be hard to explain in the hallowed halls of officialdom. “Is it okay if I take a wire hanger out of your closet?”

“I guess so,” he turned his attention back to Casper, the Friendly Ghost.  The little girl was now standing on the couch staring at me while vigorously chasing a booger around her nose with a slimy finger. I tried to imagine the conversation over dinner later that night, “Mommy, a Sheriff came in the house and took a hanger today.”

“You know kids; maybe you shouldn’t watch Deputy Dawg anymore.”

I went to the bedroom and ferreted out a hanger.  “Halfway home,” I thought.

I returned to the unit, with the amber flasher still ticking away but now saying, “I’m stupid… I’m stupid… I’m stupid.” I straightened the hanger, inserted it between the door and weather stripping, and began fishing for that little knob.  I fished, and I fished, and I fished… you know what; this is not as easy as it looks on TV.

With each failed attempt, my focus began to wander again and I realized that every motorist who passed recognized what I was doing.  I saw people laughing; some honked their horns playing a tune, “Look at the stupid cop, locked himself out his car. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

After several minutes, I was drenched in sweat.  I had given up hope that I could solve this problem without assistance.  I was hoping Jack would show up.  Then the situation grew even more desperate.  A motorist pulled to the side of the road behind me. He exited his car and approached.  He was dressed in chinos and a tank-type undershirt and had hair sprouting out of his shoulders and chest that would make a gorilla blanch with shame by comparison.  His skin was swarthy in the way of Sicilians. I was going to be killed by a Goombah from the Mafia… I didn’t even know we had Goombahs in San Diego.  And remember, as a Cadet, I was unarmed; a locked door between me and the shotgun dutifully affixed in its rack. I imagined my mother would miss me in spite the ignominious nature of my demise.

“Hey there, Deputy; it looks like you locked yourself outta your cah,” he said a with clichéd Brooklyn accent (or maybe it was the Bronx, how would I know). “When I lived in New Yawk, my family owned a pawking lot.  I’m an expert at dis.”

He held out his hand, and I was relieved to see no weapon of any kind.  I handed him the hanger. He deftly began to manipulate wire into a tool of some usefulness. “You see, what youse gotta do is measure the distance from the top of the window here, to the knob inside the door there.  Then youse make a little hook in the end, slide the hanger between the window and the door frame, turn the hook down, catch the top of the knob, pull up and,” plink “the door is unlocked!”

“Thanks,” I said, hoping he could not tell there were tears of relief mixed with the sweat running down my face.  He jogged back to his car, got in and with a wave was off. I just stood there for a moment wondering to which charity I should donate this week’s paycheck. I threw the newly formed auto theft tool into to the weeds and headed back to the station.

Once there I was greeted by the Sergeant whose expert set of police skills made it obvious to him that I had been to the store and returned with soda.  In deference to my sweat soaked uniform shirt he intoned, “It’s a hot one out there today, isn’t it Cadet?”

As for the fate of the cartoon watching waifs, there was only one murder in Poway while I was assigned there and it wasn’t them, so eventually my conscience reconciled with my career survival instinct and I was able to sleep well again.  To my knowledge, nobody ever suspected I had come so close being the laughing stock of the office.

In retrospect, there is one truth I learned from this adventure.  We all want to think we’re Bugs Bunny, but in our hearts we know we’re really Daffy Duck.