WhyNot, that is also known as a church key. 
Check out the article I linked a bit ago.
I use one all the time, but I haven’t used one for a canned *beverage * in decades.
Oh, hey, thanks!
FWIW, I had never heard the term until about three years ago. The person using it, as I, am life-long residents of the same state in roughly the same area.
Some great replies and links, folks. I do remember those bottle opener things, but never called that sort of thing a church key. Cap lifter, bottle opener, that sort of thing. I always thought “church key” was a strange name for the triangle-hole-puncher tool, but didn’t really question its origin or even its name. That’s just what we called it.
I love threads like this where Pandora’s Box gets opened up and all sorts of new trivia starts pouring out. I’d be surprised if something truly bizarre relating to the opening of containers doesn’t crop up soon. Some already have!
That notion of having to use one often enough to carry one around with you makes me remember one I carried on a key ring. It folded so the triangle-punch and the “cap lifter” overlapped and didn’t poke a hole in your pocket.
If you didn’t have the tool handy, it was fairly common practice to take a bottle that didn’t have the screw cap, to a table edge and fit one of those little projections on the cap over the edge of the table and then either jerk the bottle down or hit it with your hand to lift the cap off. There were some less-well-informed types who would lift the cap off with their teeth. I even recall a line of dialog in a movie talking about somebody’s relative whose sole purpose in life, due to the arrangement of his one or two good teeth, was to serve as a Human Bottle Opener. Was that in Streetcar?
One of my roommates has one… I’d never seen one before she showed it to me. We use it for non-twist off beer caps all the time.
My “church key” says EKCO on it. I don’t know what that means.
I used to have a bottle opener on a keyring; I lived in Denmark for a time and everyone had them, because soda pop came in bottles too. My parents used to have one that lived on the fridge that said B&O (as in, the stereo company) and the O was the opener part.
[/random musings]
EKCO is a manufacturer of cheap kitchen utinsils.
I never knew they were called that - I’ve been looking for one of these for ages to open my cans of evaporated milk.
I think I’ve used a church key within the past year. I occasionally enjoy drinking fruit nectars. These cans have pop tabs, but the tabs sometimes don’t puncture the top properly, which means that I have to hunt down the church key. Incidentally, the blunt end of the key can be used to break the vacuum seal of jars, if the lid is shallow enough.
When I was younger, I used to make chains of pop tops. I also made chains out of gum wrappers and paper clips.
We have a can opener that opens the can by uncrimping the top. I don’t particularly care for it, and it’s no good for opening tuna cans. I always use the lid of the can to strain out the liquid, and the uncrimper doesn’t leave me with a good straining lid.
Goodness. So in Kentucky Avenue, when Tom Waits sings “put a church key in your pocket” he didn’t actually mean a big heavy key, like one would use to open a big church door?
So now I’m guessing that lyric means “an implement to open cans of liquid” (for taking on adventures or to drink illicit beer). Would that be a reasonable interpretation?
Being unfamiliar with the song, all I can say is that that would be a reasonable interpretation. The Wikipedia link above suggests that the term’s origin goes back to the Middle Ages when monks were in charge of the production of alcoholic beverages. I like that idea even if it’s apocryphal. For all I know they may have been named for some guy named Church, much the same way that Crapper is alleged to have invented the indoor toilet.
Well, the lyrics talk about heading down to New Orleans, so a bottle opener might be a good thing to have. 
Nitpick / Warning: evaporated milk != condensed milk :eek:
Cal is right though… I think cans of sweetened condensed milk do have the weird rims, but I’ve never had a problem using a church key on an evaporated milk can.
I’ve never heard the term either, except in relation to a key that opens the doors of a church.
I used one 2 weeks ago to open a big can of pineapple juice for making fruity party drinks!
I still do. It doesn’t get used much any more but it’s been on the ring for at least 30 years now.
Gah. I still can’t find one for sale here in the UK - at least not a basic one - there’s a pointy bit on the end of some can and bottle openers, but I just want the pressed metal device.
How am I going to open my Party Sevens now?
I used a church key about six times in the past six days to open sweetened condensed milk (I only needed to use a little), evaporated milk and pineapple juice