Retired Locksmith's Memoir Reveals He Could Never Figure Out His Own Garage Door Opener

Retired master locksmith Earl Pinion's new memoir, 'Every Lock Tells a Story (Except the One on My Garage),' has drawn attention for a candid 32-page chapter in which the 40-year industry veteran admits he was never able to reliably operate his own garage door opener. 'I have opened Abloy Protec2 cylinders,' Pinion writes in Chapter 14, titled 'My Nemesis.' 'I have bypassed Kaba Quattro systems in foreign embassies. I have extracted broken keys from locks manufactured in countries that no longer exist. But the Chamberlain LiftMaster 8500W in my garage operated according to principles I never fully understood, and I spent eleven years pretending otherwise.' The chapter describes a relationship of escalating frustration between Pinion and the garage door opener, which he installed in 2009. The device reportedly responded to its remote control 'approximately 60 percent of the time,' opened unprompted during rainstorms, and once reversed direction mid-cycle with enough force to launch a tennis ball across the street. 'Mechanical locks obey physical laws,' Pinion writes. 'Springs compress. Pins align. Shear lines form. The Chamberlain existed outside these laws. It was not a machine. It was a philosophical challenge disguised as a home appliance.' Pinion's wife, Glenda, is quoted in the chapter as saying she operated the same device 'without incident for over a decade' using the wall button, which Pinion dismisses as 'an admission of defeat.' The memoir has received favorable reviews from the locksmithing community, with several retired colleagues admitting similar struggles with consumer electronics. 'We're mechanical people,' said fellow retiree Don Cylinder. 'Give me a lock with pins and springs and I'll open anything. Give me a wireless remote with a blinking light and I become my mother trying to work the DVD player.'