I overheard this phrase in a country and western tune on the car radio today:
“That door ain’t never been locked, and I swear it never will”
I found myself greatly puzzled by this. The tone of the lyrics clearly intended that never locking one’s door was supposed to be a good thing. Maybe I’m just to citified, but that seems foolish to me. I mean, sure, the Bad Guys are totally responsible for entering where they don’t belong but really, bragging you never lock your door, like this is something to be proud of? WTF?
It suggests that you live in a community that is small and close knit enough that personal crime is virtually unheard of, and that you take pride in that fact: you see your own communities collective ability to avoid the temptation to steal as an indicator of your own personal morality.
Throwback to the good 'ol days in 'Merica when you could leave your doors unlocked and not have to worry about the filth of society letting itself in. Years of listening to the media have convinced people that someone is going to break in any moment, you can’t let your kids play outside or they’ll get abducted, etc.
That said, locking your doors is a false sense of security in so many ways. Kicking a door open? Extremely easy. Bumping the lock? Also easy. Going in through a window? Yep, pretty easy. There’s really nothing stopping someone determined to get into your house short of fortifying it with bars, steel doors, etc. Of course, if someone broke in here, it’d be the last thing they ever did, but I think quite a lot of people think 911 is some sort of magical shield that will stop a robber in their tracks.
There’s something to be said for stopping the bored kids who aren’t determined to get in, but are trying handles, or the junkie who is looking for the easiest possible score.
I mean, not everyone who breaks into houses is an ax murderer coming for you in particular.
I think it is part of the myth of “small town” America, where, back in the good old days before all those city folk and liberals and foreigners ruined everything, everybody in town knew everyone else, there was no crime (beyond the town drunk), and everybody was welcome in everybody else’s home. Locking your door would be both unnecessary and inhospitable.
As a British person, newly arrived in America, in a smallish town (but a university town no less) in California, people warned me not to go out of my apartment without locking the front door (with the implication that this necessity was a fairly recent, sad, modern development). I was quite taken aback. I grew up in a pretty middle-class, law abiding area in Britain, but I would never have dreamed of going out without locking my front door, and I have some doubt as to whether Americans of earlier generations really ever did so either. They like to believe they did, though.
I can attest that my parents here in the usa did not lock their doors unless they were leaving via car (so they don’t lock on neighborly visits). They didn’t even lock their car doors or put the windows up unless they expected rain.
One day, a drugged up girl from the townhouses down the street decided to come into our yard, slice a few things up, pull out a ton of flowers, and steal some tools. We simply walked by the houses until we found the one covered in discarded uprooted flowers and called the police, who had to break in because she had passed out upstairs.
After that, my parents locked the car doors.
They still don’t lock the house door unless they’re leaving entirely. They have a 6 acre yard so it’s entirely possible to be outside and have someone walk in without anyone knowing.
We didn’t even have a key to our front door - we were going on a two week vacation, and the folks thought that locking the door would be a good idea, until they realized that they really couldn’t. 1960’s, small town MN. The door had a bolt, but it was one of the old ‘skeleton’ key ones, and we didn’t have a key to it.
My dad would get pissed at us kids when we’d take the keys out of the car ignition - he just assumed he could get in the car and go. Same town, but that was in the 1970’s.
Mom is still in that house. There is a dead bolt on the front door now, and she was looking it for a while, but I think she’s back to not bothering.
I grew up in small town MN, and my parents still don’t lock their doors, unless they’re going to leave the house for more than a couple of days. Since a spate of teenagers going through cars a couple years ago, though, they do lock the car that sits outside. Not the ones in the (unlocked) garage, though.
Metaphorical door? Establishment that’s open 24/7/365?
My back door tends to go unlocked, I keep it open a lot for the airflow with the screen door and often forget to lock it when I shut it. The ground floor is gated, though, so unless another resident is breaking in, it’s even less likely a crackhead is going to traipse up to the fourth floor. At least that’s what I tell myself whenever I realize I left the door open again.
I spent the mid-90s as a kid in a small midwestern college town (15,000 people during the school year), no one locked their doors and cars including my transplanted parents, and there was almost no crime. If there is low crime, it’s not a big deal. It’s at least a fairly recent reality for quite a few people.
Lately I’ve been living in busy parts of the 5th and 3rd largest cities in America. I don’t leave my door or bike unlocked ever, that would be stupid.
The song sounds like some idiot logic, though. Times change and neighborhoods and towns go bad.
I live in a moderately nice neighborhood in Santa Barbara. I do lock my doors but I really don’t have to do so. I bought my house twenty years ago and I haven’t heard of a break in the immediate area.
Even if they did break in, I don’t have much to take. I don’t have any jewelry or anything. The most valuable thing in the house is my 55" flat screen and I can’t see someone carrying that out of the house and into a vehicle. My old lap top isn’t worth much. It would be a total waste of their time.
But 7-11’s do, because what if they need to evacuate the area for some weather emergency or something? Surely the Dennys would have locks for the same reason?
I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1950’s-1960’s. Somebody will argue about whether I should have put those apostrophes there. But we didn’t keep our door locked during the day. We locked it at night, or when we were away.
Fast forward to 2000 through 2003. The old hood has changed. These days, you wouldn’t want to be outdoors at night there. But I lived here in those years. I never locked my door, day or night or even when I was at work. I only locked it when I went away for several days at a time. And I didn’t lock my car door there either (although I locked it when I was at work or elsewhere).
When I was a kid we knew everybody on our block. Nobody had more than one car (if any) so basically you would know if a strange car was there or if a stranger was walking about. People sat out on their porch in the evening so it was really one big surveillance system. During the day women stayed home and took care of the kids so at any given time there were multiple people watching over things.
I walked or rode my bike to kindergarten and back and as I remember it the bike rack was usually full. None of them were locked up nor did we lock our bikes going to the store.
