Summer 2023

spent so many of my child- hood winter days daydreaming of summer…picnics and tide pools with skies of cerulean blue hovering above.Those gray chilly days seemed long, with only Christmas to weather us through until, triumphantly, sum- mer arrived, when even when it was dark, we never wanted to go inside. While I loved our day trips to Bodega Bay and holiday weekends in Yosemite, most summer getaways were spent on my dad’s motorboat as my parents fished for stripers along the Sacramento River. Funny how one little memory frames the larger ones. I remember my dad’s boat had an iron bottle opener screwed to the inside, where we could pop off our soda caps with one hand, as the boat slapped across the river waves. Even at that young age, I thought that was pretty cool. In those days, soda and beer came in glass bottles with crimped metal caps. No amount of twisting could remove them, so a bottle opener was needed or one could die of thirst trying. Back in the 1800s, there wasn’t a need for bottle openers because bot- tles were closed with a cork or wood plug and opened with a corkscrew. Another method was a swing top, which were porcelain stoppers held in place with a wire bail to seal the bottle. Both bottles and their stoppers tended to be reusable, which caused all manners of hygienic issues and oftentimes, flat beer. In 1892,William Painter invented the crown cork-style bottle cap which crimped a metal cap over the bottle opening and, because he needed it, came up with the invention of a little opener to pop that cap. These two little gadgets made Painter’s fortune and forever changed the world of beverage drinking. Within a matter of years, the crown cap had been embraced by the major soda and beer manufactur- ers, which increased their sales dra- matically. With the accelerated pro- duction and sales of beverages in crown-capped bottles, the need also increased for the little tool needed to remove the cap from the bottle. And thus began our history of the humble bottle opener. A rush of “church key” openers hit the market, many displaying the logos of breweries and soda compa- nies, as they quickly realized the importance of give-away openers to promote their brands. The fierce competition in the early 1900s between Pabst, Miller and Anheuser-Busch caused feuds to out-promote each other with promotional products as they vied for the consumer’s dollar. The name church key, according to the Dictionary of American Slang, was given to the first bottle openers as they resembled the ornate handle of the large keys that were once used to lock church doors. Today these openers, with logos and names of early beer and soda companies, are plen- tiful and are snatched up by collectors at flea markets and antique fairs. In 1925, the wall-mount bottle cap opener was invented to make it easy 94 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 COLLECTING T E XT AND PHOTOGRA PHY B Y MAR J OR I E S OW Just for Openers... I Rare collection of openers ranging from a wall-mount with corkscrew, art deco nude, mermaid and standing parrot.