Regular patrons of the old blog will possibly recall that I have a thing for the “church key” style of bottle opener and have written about it a couple times.

The first time was in the spring, and upon seeing that post, a reader was kind enough to get ahold of me and say she had once picked up a whole bunch of those bottle openers at an estate sale and would gladly give me one if I would like.

I said that would be really cool, but when months began to pass, I sort of forgot about the offer, until one day late in the summer, when this showed up:

Lundy-opener

This is so cool it immediately became, in my mind anyway, my lucky bottle opener.

Not only is it a church key, it’s a Blitz-Weinhard church key, which is meaningful to me because Blitz was a big brewery in Portland when I was a kid growing up in Milwaukie. One of my good friends’ dads even worked there, and cans and stubbies of Blitz were regulars in the basement fridge in the Lundeberg house.

I figured the next motorcycle trip I went on, I’d wear the BW opener — a sort of St. Blitzopher medal if you will — and then I thought, what the heck, why wait for the next trip? So I’ve taken to wearing it to work — under my shirt, of course — whenever I’m working the night shift, which seems to be about 14 days a week since our switch to an AM publishing schedule.

The lucky bottle opener sort of sustains me throughout the evening — plus, when I get home and want to start drinking, I never have to look around for a tool to pry the cap off the Fat Tire, Mirror Pond, Jubelale, etc. that I want to unwind with.

So thanks again, thoughtful reader: I raise my glass to you, and to the bottle opener you gave me.