We've lived in our current house for almost twenty years. We bought it because it is one of the few places in Hermiston that has a view. Our three acres back up to the Umatilla River and a park. Our backyard looks over the river to the Hermiston Butte. We have neighbors on either side of us at a comfortable distance. It's quiet, but not isolated. It's a quick few minutes drive into town (if you don't get stopped at the light at the Mormon Church!)
We rarely lock the doors...usually only when we're going out of town. Last year when we went to San Diego for Christmas we had to search the house to find a key so we could lock the doors. We've never had a problem.
At Thanksgiving we went to Austin to see the grandchildren. We didn't have to search for a key because our son stayed home. Sometime while we were gone the spouse's workshop was robbed. We have no idea when it happened. When we first got home the spouse thought that he had just misplaced his binoculars. After several days of looking in all the places that he might have left them, he realized that he was missing a lot of other things too. When you look at the list of things that he knows are missing, you might wonder how he didn't know immediately that he had been robbed. But, in his defense, the shop is a large building separate from the house and it is filled from floor to ceiling with his tools and toys, including a 28 foot sailboat on a trailer, a refrigerator for beer, cable TV, wood stove, metal lathe, reloading bench, gun safe and wood working bench.
We were fortunate that the majority of the spouse's really pricey toys were in his gun safe. This has been an expensive lesson for us, but we've learned to recognize when the Universe is sending us a message. We don't need another lesson to learn that times have changed and even in small towns we have to lock our doors and not be so trusting. But I can't help but be sad that our trusting way of life is changing. We have a new doorknob with keypad entry installed on the shop door. After trying it out for a week, we've ordered additional knobs to install on the house exterior doors.
The new doorknobs lock automatically. To open the door you have to enter the access code on the keypad. Now every time I take out the trash I'll need to type in a code to get back in the house. Running back in the house for something I have forgotten will take a little longer. Remembering the new code...now that will be the real challenge.
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