On Sunday of last week I went to park my van in my brother’s garage before heading to the airport for my annual trip to Mexico. When I got there, Ben asked me if I needed a ride to Seatac. I told him I could catch an Uber. It’s really not a problem, he told me. I did a bit of quick math to calculate the cost to him of driving me, and found that the amount of money I’d save wouldn’t justify his time outlay. I explained all this and he shrugged as if to say, “Suit yourself.”

Half a day later I was in Mexico City, and a day later I was cutting keys in the locksmith shop where I learned my trade. My old friend Alberto, the one-eyed handyman, passed by the locksmith shop and was surprised and happy to see me. He asked if I wanted to come and help him with a project a couple of streets over. I readily accepted the invitation.

It turned out we were doing a job for the couple that runs the fruit smoothie stand on the corner. I’ve only bought one smoothie from them and found it didn’t compare to the ones Benito makes at the other end of the block. Alberto explained that there was a problem with the power line that needed to be fixed right away, because they couldn’t work without power. In the U.S., we would call the power company to take care of this. That’s also an option in Mexico if you don’t mind waiting. Or you just fix the problem.

Alberto took a couple short lengths of rope and used them to expertly shimmy up an electrical pole across the street from the smoothie stand. This is something that he’d done countless times when working for the carnival. My job was to look out for patrol cars, as he obviously wasn’t supposed to be doing this. He wasn’t up the pole for two minutes before I said, “Berto! Patrulla!” and he quickly slid down as we all scattered. When the police car had crept down the street and turned a corner, Al went back up and had me pass him a bundle of cable. I divided my attention between the end of the road from which more police cars would be coming, and Al at work. I watched as he spliced a power cable to create a new line of power. When that was done, he began draping the line across the street and I realized what was going on. The electric company must have discovered a pilfered power connection and disconnected it, effectively putting the smoothie stand out of business. Alberto was running them a new source of power. The ethics of stealing elecricity from the city to run a blender are the topic for another post. But as soon as I understood what was happening, I took my leave and returned to the shop.

When I saw Alberto again later in the day—he stores his tools two doors down from the locksmith shop and is always walking by—I told him I hoped he’d charged his customers appropriately for the job. “Pues si,” he said. He then revealed that he’d received $ 500MXN for the job, or roughly $25. I’m quite certain that what he’d done was a jailable offense. I asked him whether he would accept a job in which he had to do that every day in return for that sum. He understood my point, and said that he didn’t charge an arm and a leg because the customers were working people like him. I understood his point.

Then he and I took off again to go to Manuel’s small appliance repair shop. Mani mostly deals with licuadoras (blenders). In fact, he tried to get me to invest in a venture that he’s working on, which relies on the use of stolen Hamilton Beach molds with which he plans to make aftermarket blender parts to sell to other repairmen like himself. (I declined the opportunity, and told him he ought to seek out the advice of a patent attorney.)

Mani’s shop sits on a quickly gentrifying street near the center of Mexico City, across from a hip sushi bar. One block closer to the center is a campsite not unlike Seattle’s “Jungle”, where a group called “la banda” has set up a permanent campsite. They all huff glue together. For as long as I’ve known him, Manuel has been employing members of this group of junkies, teaching them his trade and sometimes serving as the catalyst for a new start in life. Tonight in the shop, the television is on and a dubbed version of “Ghost” is playing.

His shop is always abuzz with activity: several young men disassembling, soldering, and reassembling various appliances; customers coming up to the counter to pick up or drop off appliances; his grown children visiting; his poodle Rocky sniffing around for foods scraps; and any number of friends and relations coming by to chat. Recently Mani lost 30% of his vision when he failed to properly discharge a microwave before starting work on it. The shock turned the skin on both of his forearms blue. Like me, Mani has hands that are always dirty. He’s a working man, but one with ambitions. The two of his kids that are old enough to have graduated college have both done so. One is a doctor and the other a lawyer.

Just outside the shop, a tweaker has made a home for himself. He’s the most wretched man I’ve ever seen. I would guess him to be about 22, and imagine he’s been huffing glue on the streets since childhood. I’ve never heard him utter a word. He just stumbles down the street to the wall right next to Mani’s shop and plants himself on the stone sidewalk. Sometimes he leans against the wall and sometimes he curls up in the fetal position to sleep. I don’t imagine he’s had a bath in many months. That doesn’t seem to be a part of his program. Sometimes people mess with him, slapping at his head or pretending to stomp and kick him. Seconds later he slowly rolls his head around, grins, and weakly swats at the air, his eyes focused on nothing. He is as thin as anyone I’ve ever seen. Mani says his intestines have fallen out of him and he can’t properly digest food. In a cinematic version of The Divine Comedy, I could easily see this man miserably pushing stones around Dante’s fourth circle of hell.

Another junkie comes by to hang out. This one, Mani explains to us, is partially reformed. He has a woman, a job, and a child. He weighs about 350 pounds, and has a face that is gentle and effeminite despite some prominent scars that betray a difficult past. He greets each of us in turn and then lowers himself into a plastic lawn chair on the sidewalk in front of Mani’s. He offers me a small baggie of loose weed, which I decline. He shrugs as if to say, “Suit yourself.” Then he takes from his pocket a balled-up baggie of something for himself, which he drops into an empty soda bottle and starts taking deep breaths from. He’s talking all the while, but after some minutes his eyelids become heavy and his speech too lazy for me to understand. Eventually he pulls the baggie out of the bottle and holds it betwen his lips as he listens to the rest of us talk.

I slip away and walk down the street to a 7-Eleven. Apart from Mani’s, it’s the only business that’s open on this street. Most places in the city closed in the afternoon because of rumors of mass vandalism, supposedly an angry reaction to a new tax that raised the price of gasoline by 20%. The door is locked, but the young cashier puts up her finger, indicating that I should wait. After she’s checked out the couple that’s in the store, she unlocks the door to let them out and then rushes me in, relocking the door behind me. I buy plastic cups and a two-liter bottle of some kind of carbonated soda cocktail, which I carry back down the street.

When I get to Mani’s, he and Alberto are talking about the blender venture. Two of the junkie workers inside the shop—Rafael and Tapia (who’s missing all of his front teeth)—have stopped working to focus all their attention on the movie. Patrick Swayze is telling Demi Moore that he has to go. Both guys are trying to hide the fact that they’re crying. I hand out cups and we all share the bottle of soda booze. Then it’s time to close up shop.

The shop boys unlock a door next to Mani’s that faces the street, revealing a hallway that’s lined and stacked with appliances. They start pulling out microwaves and carrying them over to the shop, piling them up in the center of the small workspace. One by one, Alberto, Mani, and I rise from the stools that we have in a circle on the sidewalk and join the boys in the effort. There must be 50 microwaves and small refrigerators to be picked up and moved. Al takes a quick break to kick the legs of the ruined tweaker out of the way so an old woman on two canes can get down the sidewalk. The last one of us to heave himself up from his seat and join in the effort is the fat man huffing the break cleaner—or whatever the hell it is. With about seven of us all at the same task, we make quick work of it. Many hands make light work.

This, I think, is what I love about Mexico: the blending of work and play; the common struggle; the generosity of spirit. Life here is hard and people support each other. It’s something that we don’t have as much of in the first world because we have the resources to help ourselves, but it leads to a kind of isolation that may not be healthy. My parents, who grew up in a time when people did need to help each other, pick their neighbors up from the airport even though the drive is an hour each way. Taking an Uber isn’t that expensive, but it’s a much lonelier thing than getting picked up by a friend or a relative. In Mexico, people request and receive, they give and they take. They depend on others and are depended upon. By necessity, they stay connected to the people around them, and this has benefits far beyond the simple favors that are traded.

I made a mistake that might have amounted to a crime. We’ll say that it was in another state and that the statute of limitations for the offense has expired. But I remember it like it was yesterday.

A property manager whom I know and trust sent me the contact information of a tenant who was having a problem with her lock. In a friendly young voice, the tenant explained that her deadbolt wasn’t working properly. She wasn’t home, but I could go and open her door and fix it in her absence. I would find an operating key on her kitchen counter.

When I arrived at her apartment, I could see that the deadbolt was crooked on her door. I got out my lock picks and felt inside the lock. Everything seemed normal. Within a minute the door was open and I was looking at the inside portion of the lock, which also seemed fine. I went to the kitchen to look for the key to see how it would work in the lock. The counter was piled with stuff — mail, coins, boxes of medicine with Cyrillic lettering on them — but no key that I could find. I scanned the apartment, looking for the key on other surfaces. The sofa had a blanket laid neatly across the cushions. The China cabinet was full of fine ornate dishes and glassware. It suddenly occurred to me that this looked very much like an old lady’s apartment. I took out my phone and called the tenant, who confirmed that I had entered the wrong unit.

I quickly left the apartment and closed the door. After looking down the long hallway in both directions, I crouched down and began to use my lock picks to pick the lock again, but this time to the closed position. But I was nervous and my hands weren’t steady enough for the job. I knew that if someone came out of an apartment and found me messing with the lock of a resident to whom I had absolutely no connection, I could quickly find myself in a lot of trouble, whether or not it was an honest mistake. I could be arrested. I could lose my license. I might have to go back to working in the salt mines. I wasn’t going to be able to do this quickly enough. I gave up on the lock picks.

I stood up and basically fled. Once back to my van, I considered what I should do. I thought about leaving a note and a business card in the woman’s apartment, explaining what had happened and apologizing for the error. But then I thought better of leaving a written confession at the scene of the crime. I considered just leaving the door unlocked and forgetting about it. But leaving some lady’s home unsecured like that would have been pretty unethical. She could have been burglarized. More likely, she might have come home and been deeply unsettled to find her door unlocked. I couldn’t do that. Plus, maybe it would prompt her to have someone pull security camera footage.

I resolved that I had to close the door properly. So I took from my van a tool that I was confident would work to pick the lock very quickly. I slipped the tool into my pocket and started back up the stairs to the apartment. As I was halfway up I heard someone following me up. I slowed my pace and let the person pass me. It was an older woman carrying a bag of vegetables. She looked Russian. I followed her down the hall a little before I said, “Excuse me, are you in 304?” She turned to me as she came to her door and said, “Da, tree-oh-four,” rolling her Rs. She pulled her keys out of her pocket and she eyed me suspiciously.

I told her, “Your door is already open.” Her facial expression did not change. Then I nervously launched into an apologetic ramble about who I was and what had happened. All the while she was saying, “Okay, da, okay,” as she nodded her head at me and used her key in the already-unlocked door. I guess she got tired of me because as I carried on, she reached for the handleset of her front door, pushed down on the thumbpress, and quickly went inside, saying, “OK, thenk you,” through the gap in the closing door. I have no idea whether she had understood me or if she was simply too distracted by me to notice that her key had not retracted the bolt. Either way, it seemed like I didn’t have a problem.

Had she arrived fifteen seconds later and found me crouched at her door trying to manipulate her deadbolt without a key, I believe I would have had a hard time effectively explaining myself to her. Although no harm was done, this was a reminder to take great care when entering the homes of people who are not physically present, even if it seems like I have their permission.

This week I got called to a house in the Blue Ridge section of Seattle, an upscale neighborhood full of beautiful old houses with magnificent views of the sound. The customer arrived late. I disliked her the moment she stepped out of her Audi, with her purse dog. She was an older woman who didn’t bother to take off her Jackie O sunglasses when greeting me. She explained that the house was a rental and she had reason to believe there might be squatters inside. This is the type of thing I like to know before I arrive at a job. If there were people inside, she had no intention of flushing them out herself.

When we opened the front door, we were immediately hit with cigarette stench. There were butts and beer bottles scattered about. “Let’s see if there’s anyone here,” she told me, encouragingly. I should be paid more for this. Trepidatiously, I walked through the ground floor, opening doors and calling out, “Anyone here??” The toilets were unflushed and had cigarette butts floating in them. One downstairs closet had a trap door to the basement that was flipped open. It was clear that someone had entered through a crawl space. But by the looks of things, no one was in. I continued my calls as I walked up a narrow winding staircase. When I was halfway up, a female voice came from around the corner. “Yes, I’m in here.” I turned around and walked down the stairs and out the door to the client to tell her what I’d learned.

The client went in and walked to the bottom of the stairs, craned her neck, and said, “Miss, you need to leave.”

“Okay,” we heard back.

Then she turned to me and said, “What do I do now?”

“Call the police,” I said. I took out my screwdriver from my back pocket and walked over to the nearest deadbolt to get to work.

My client stood in the kitchen and had an overly loud conversation with the Seattle Police Department. I tried to gesture to her to walk outside with her phone. It was my desire that the police would arrive in time to arrest the intruder(s). I didn’t want her to alert them to the urgency of the situation. It didn’t matter, though. Upstairs I heard some rustling and something being sprayed out of an aerosol can. No one was making a run for it.

I was still working fifteen minutes later when a young woman came down. She was about 20, slightly plump, and had a cold sore. Her bosom was pushed up nearly to her chin, and was dangerously close to bursting out of the top of her shirt. She approached me, seemingly out of breath, and began a ramble. “It wasn’t me. A couple of my friends were staying here and I was just visiting–.” I cut her off with a shake of the head.

“Talk to that lady. I’m just the locksmith.” She went outside and I carried on.

When it seemed like I was finished I looked for the client to hand over the new keys. She filled me in on what I’d missed while I was working. She had told the squatter that a security firm would be watching the house, but that she would gather up her items and leave them on the curb in a bag. I was impressed by the woman’s generosity of spirit.The neighbors later told her that as many as four people had been seen going in and out of the house. Apparently they’d got their hands on the spare keys hanging from a nail in the garage. Also, packages had been disappearing from porches up and down the street.

Then she asked if I’d changed the lock on the door on the balcony. I always miss the door on the balcony. She ascended the stairs with me, wearing a pair of rubber kitchen gloves and shoveling men’s clothes into a bag as she went. The floor of the master bedroom was littered with used hypodermic needles. Both of us got to work–she at cleaning, and me at rekeying the last lock in the house.

“Do you think that if I gave them their clean needles, I’d be enabling them?” she asked, holding a trash bag in one hand and a sealed bag of new syringes in another.

“I think that whether or not you give them those needles, they’re still going to be junkies,” I told her.

“Oh, these wasted lives,” she said, sorrowfully.

My opinion of my customer had shifted. She made me feel guilty for not having more empathy for these thieving drug-addicted trespassers. And it stung a little that I was out-liberalled by this old lady (who didn’t, in reality, have a dog in her purse). But that’s a topic for another blog.

The lesson of the story is this: if you don’t want to have to wrestle with your own reactions to the tragic lives and trespassing ways of smack fiends, check to make sure your crawl space is secured.

The other night my phone rang at 12:30. Though I was in a deep sleep and in my jammies, I answered the phone on the second ring with pep in my voice. I enjoy late-night calls. This one was from a bartender in Duvall. She said a girl at the bar had lost her house keys and needed some locksmith help. I told her that I was pretty far away and that it could take me 45 minutes to arrive. Maybe she should try such-and-such locksmith closer to her location. That’s alright, she said. Mine was the dozenth number she’d called and I was the first to pick up. I quoted a price that was competitive but still commensurate with the task of rolling out of bed for a long drive in the middle of the night. This was followed by muffled voices. Okay, please come, she said.

I was a little apprehensive as I barreled down the mostly empty streets to Duvall, wondering what I was going to encounter. Drunk people can be…interesting. When I arrived at the bar about 40 minutes after we’d finished the call, the bartender immediately recognized me, probably because of my goatee. It’s not something I ever wore before I was a locksmith. I consider it part of my uniform. She pointed me toward the back of the bar where I’d find my customer.

She was easy enough to spot. The only person in that section of the bar was a middle-aged woman in the corner booth, reading a newspaper. She was around my mother’s age—old enough that she could be called comely, but not yet to the point that we could say she was handsome. I approached her table and gave a little wave. She looked up at me, giggled, shook her head, and tried to wave me away. I guess she thought she was out of my league. No, I’m David, your locksmith, I told her. Surprised and embarrassed, she folded up her paper and slid out of the booth.

She followed me out the door of the bar, walked toward my van, and asked if it was mine. When I confirmed that it was, she reached for the locked passenger side door and tried to open it. So it was clear now that she was expecting a ride to her house. I got more of the story once we were underway. She was not drunk. She’d locked herself out of her house and then trekked a mile and a half to the only place where she could use a phone and then sit inside for an hour in the middle of the night.

When we arrived at her house, she went directly into the open three-car garage and pointed at the service door. This is the one you need to open, she told me. Lots of times people try to tell me which specific door they expect me to open. I consider that to be my choice to make. Let me look around for an easier way in first, I say.

I began my routine tour of the outside of her house, searching for an open door or window. She gave me the routine assurances that there were none to be found. As I rounded the second corner of the house, she mumbled something about a bathroom window. I didn’t quite hear her. But when I got around to the final stretch of this lap around the house, I figured out what she was talking about. There was something I’d never run into on a lockout call: a shattered window. I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. We’d already discussed how her identification was locked inside the house and how I’d look at it as soon as we got inside.

Then she came clean, a little chagrinned. After she’d realized she was locked out, she took a hammer to the window, planning to crawl through it. This was sensible enough. It beats schlepping to a bar and waiting for a far-off locksmith to arrive. But once she saw all the jagged glass, she lost courage and decided to call for assistance.

I carefully reached through the hole in the window, unhooked the latch, and slid the window frame out of the way. From the garage, I got a doormat and a stepstool. I draped the rubber mat over the shards of glass littering the windowsill, climbed up on the stool, and slipped in through the little open window. (As a diminutive man who watches his carbs, I can often fit through spaces that are not designed for adult human passage.) Then I went through the house to open the garage door from the inside. We immediately went for her purse to look at her license and then settle up, whereupon I cut the nice lady a spare key to hide in her garage, and then set out on the long drive back to bed.