Remembering dear ole Ben

Ben M, a dear friend of many of us in SRQ died in Dec 2016 at aged 92.

 We talk about him often, always with fondness.

 The gift I received the other day 

reminded me that Ben also gave me a wine bottle stopper
What fun!


One day Ben gave me a gift in this box


I knew that it could not be an engagement ring for we were not that close!

 I pondered  "is a a tie clip or some cuff links?"

 None of the above.  It was a churchkey.

I keep it my junk drawer in the box.  That way I always be able to find it easily.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Church Key from Wikepedia.
A churchkey initially referred to a simple hand-operated device for prying the cap (called a "crown cork") off a glass bottle; this kind of closure was invented in 1892, although there is no evidence that the opener was called a "church key" at that time.[1] The shape and design of some of these openers did resemble a large simple key.[2]
In 1935, beer cans with flat tops were marketed, and a device to puncture the lids was needed. The same term, "church key", came to be used for this new invention: made from a single piece of pressed metal, with a pointed end used for piercing cans — devised by D.F. Sampson[3][4] for the American Can Company, who depicted operating instructions on the cans,[5] and typically gave away free "quick and easy" openers with their beer cans.[6]
Paint Can Openers include bottle openers.[7]

Etymology[edit]

The term in the beverage-opening sense is apparently not an old one; Merriam-Webster finds written attestation only since the 1950s.[8] Several etymological themes exist. The main one is that the ends of some bottle openers resemble the heads of large keys such as have traditionally been used to lock and unlock church doors.[9] The other is that jocularity helped propel the popular spread of the name, with the joke being that opening a beer is an activity that usually has little to do with pious or ecclesiastical circumstances—historical connections between monasteries and brewing notwithstanding.

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