Locked Out Again
August 2025
It wasn’t her fault. Connie was sweet and beautiful, her allure too hard to resist. I thought I could get away with it and stop for only a few minutes, if only to gaze upon her beautiful shape.
But my detour to her doorstep brought me deep despair. I paid dearly for my mistake.
Connie stays at Kansas City’s old municipal airport. She’s known more formally as a Lockheed Constellation, the airline workhorse of the 1950s. You’d instantly recognize the plane, with her curvy porpoise fuselage, three tail fins and four propellers—the poster plane for Howard Hughes’ TWA.
She sits in Hangar 9, a museum at the old airport, itself a relic, replaced by the larger, safer Kansas City International Airport. Tucked into a tight river bend beneath the watchful eyes of the Kansas City skyline, this airport museum gets overlooked by just about everybody, one of Kansas City’s best-kept secrets.
On the day we visited the old airport, foul weather had grounded flights. Forecasters predicted tornadoes. So Erifnus, my car, delivered me through the howling wind and rain into the parking lot.
As I climbed out and locked her doors, I realized I’d left the keys in her ignition. I stood, numb, frozen—not from the wind and rain that pelted me, but from my own stupidity.
Erifnus Caitnop doesn’t deserve such rude neglect. She’s performed nearly flawlessly as my Trigger, my Lassie and my Old Faithful all rolled into 140 horsepower. She is my one constant companion along this journey across every mile of every road on Missouri’s highway map, my trusty steed for 15 years and nearly 300,000 miles.
But on this day, she sat protecting my keys from the wind and the rain.
And me.
I must confess that this is not the first time I’ve locked the keys in this car. In fact, I’ve probably tied a world record: performing this stupid feat twice in one day. That memory is painful. At the end of that horrible day I promised Erifnus I’d never again treat her with such neglect.
But over the years, as with most partnerships, there were stressful moments. Most were caused by driver error. Spinouts. Warning tickets. Getting stuck in mud. Sliding sideways under downed power lines. Stuff like that.
And now this.
I regained my composure and entered the museum hangar, confessing my stupidity to the friendly folks inside. They were extremely helpful, being pilots and mechanics and classic airplane lovers.
But try as we did, we couldn’t make a coat hanger unlock my car.
So after a tour of the museum and a walk down the aisle of that classic old aircraft with its three tail fins and four engines and porpoise-shaped fuselage—and $90 for a locksmith—I thanked my hosts, said farewell to Connie, tucked my tail fin in the driver’s seat, and drove home.