My husband came in this morning from doing some work on one of our Oklahoma properties, he was grouchy as a gremlin in the water! The screen door swung open, and he hollered out, “babe, I locked the keys in the Ford pickup truck. I was making breakfast and didn’t care much about what he was saying, but as he continued blabbering about his keys, I realized we didn’t have another way to get around the property without our F-150.
He settled, and we ate some bacon and farm fresh eggs, some comfort food to ease the tension always seems to work with him. We wrapped up eating, then had a cup of coffee, and by that time, he was ready to defeat this nagging inconvenience that had arisen. We walked about a half-mile down to where he was setting up some fencing, and sure enough, there were the keys inside the truck. Now, this old bucket of bolts doesn’t have any fancy auto-locking system, so not sure how the doors locked unless he manually pushed the driver side door one down. He refused to admit he did that and insisted that it somehow auto-locked, which wasn’t even a feature in that old bucket of bolts.
Time to Call a Locksmith
We tinkered for about an hour with a bent hanger and a slim Jim and couldn’t get the lock to pop. We walked back to the house and opened up the Yellowpages to look for a lock smith. That old book had been collecting dust for the past few years. I scrolled back to the “L” section like it was 1980 again, and I was searching for local service providers. I found a locksmith in Oklahoma City that was very responsive and polite on the phone. He said it was only going to take him forty-five minutes to be there and that he would have the door unlocked in a matter of minutes. Sure enough, he arrived and opened our door without any issues. Those older model Ford trucks don’t have fancy locking mechanisms, so the old school tools still work on them. Not sure why my husband couldn’t get it done, seems easy enough to me.
Making Spare Keys
Well, the truck was unlocked, and we are back in business. Trucking hay bales around the farm property is an absolute must if you want to keep the grazing horses and free-roaming animals like deer fed. Farm maintenance is a busy job, and having your keys locked in your truck or tractor can be a significant setback. Our solution for preventing this in the future is simple; we had the locksmith create a spare set of keys for the tuck and the tractor. This is something that should have been done a long time ago.
I wanted to get this written up shared with our community. It’s an easy lesson learned. If you have farm vehicles that you use regularly, make sure you keep a spare set of keys, or you will be calling a locksmith to your property too!