Locks and stresses
npJane came over today to get a key to the moomincabin to make a copy of it so she could have her own personal key. There’s a key next door at the Old Cabin but she needed her own key and I totally agree. Like why are we only now getting around to this? Not that there’s anything crazy going on in the fam (there isn’t), just that this is a good thing for her and for us for various logistical reasons that are too boring to go into.
The course of the conversation brought up memories of the doors and locks on the moomincabin since it was built. In 1960. I was six. My (late) brother was three. Yeah, okay, do the math.
The photo shows the front door (to the right) and the back door to the left at the back of the photoooo. Both doors have a little lever that locks the door. The front door also has (or had) a sorta traditional lock that you had to unlock with a key. So even if you had a key for the lock, if you had locked the levers, you couldn’t get into the moomincabin.
I’ll never forget when this kind of thing happened to my me, my mom, and brother, after a trip to town. Somehow both levers got locked and there we were on the deck not being able to get inside. The Comm was a bit stressed out about this but with a few bits of good luck, the kitchen window (unseen in the photo but to the left of the refrigimatator) was open a bit. We pushed the window screen into the kitchen and I was enough of a monkey at that time of my life that I climbed through the window and over the sink and unlocked the levers on the doors. I could NOT do that now🤪
Eventually, after many many years but while The Commander was still alive, the front door lock broke and after many *more* years of multiple people trying to find a replacement without success, we went with “door 3”. The problem is that the doors on this ancient cabin are not a standard size (eeet eeez a cabin, roight?) and cannot be replaced easily. I mean we could replace them but that might require more renovation that we might want. What to do? I dunno. I’m just musing, not looking for advice🧡
June 24th, 2025 at 8:14 pm
Non-standard is tough to find and usually expensive if you do. I would stay with the tried and true.
June 25th, 2025 at 7:17 am
Apropos of exactly nothing in your post, I’m commenting to let you know I’m reading a novel, Vanish in an Instant by Margaret Millar. The setting is the fictional town of Arbana, MI, which is the name the author gave to Ann Arbor, where she lived at one time.