“There is nothing more important than a good, safe, secure home.”
— Rosalynn Carter, first lady of the United States, wife of President Jimmy Carter.
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The state-of-the-art home security panel on the wall behind me chimed a warning. Someone was on my front porch.
A glance at the video with night-vision capabilities crisp enough to read the expiration date on a milk carton revealed the intruder—my big tomcat scurrying past the front door in pursuit of a June bug.
The urgency of the alert seemed comical when you compared the actual threat to my home with a system designed to fortify against tactical breaches. I think we’ve successfully turned our homes into digital fortresses, all to protect flat-screen televisions we barely watch, and a kitchen counter cluttered with junk mail.
It hasn’t always been this way. I’m old enough to remember the mythological era of childhood when “home security” was a screen door with a hook that didn’t always fit the eyelet. We didn’t lock the front door at night. Doing so would have felt like we were insulting the neighborhood, as if we suspected the minister or the milkman of moonlighting as a cat burglar.
Also in those days, taking the keys out of the station wagon was an unnecessary chore. They dangled permanently from the ignition switch on the dash. Hey, the Chevy didn’t even need a key to start it. GM switches in the mid-50s were designed to work without one.
Nobody stole it because everyone on the block already owned a used car not much better than the one sitting in our driveway. And our collective net worth was tied up in Tupperware, faith, and a shared feeling that the world was generally a safe place.
Not locking up wasn’t bravery either; it was our beautifully innocent, total lack of worry. The concept of “intruders” was limited to comic books and Dragnet on the black-and-white TV. “Just the facts, ma’am.”
The late-1980s dawn of social paranoia prompted my first security system, one that was hardwired by Ma Bell to a monitoring service in Dallas. The beige plastic monstrosity residing on the wall possessed the digital intelligence of a toaster and the volatile temperament of a cornered raccoon.
I recall one night around 2:00 a.m., the alarm company rang my bedside telephone. I managed a sleepy “hello” before a real person said, “We’re detecting motion in your dining room.”
Instead of waiting for, “We’re dialing the police,” I wildly sprang out of bed and grabbed the nearest weapon—one of my size eleven loafers off the floor.
Creeping down the hallway, ready to do battle with a desperate criminal, I rounded the corner into the dining room. Instead of a burglar, however, I came face-to-face with a helium-filled “Happy Birthday” balloon brought home from an office birthday party. The central heat’s gentle draft was carrying it lazily across the dark room as my sophisticated defense system painted the floating party favor as an intruder sneaking through my house.
Trust me, there’s nothing more humbling than standing in your shorts and wielding a shoe while negotiating with a keypad as a shiny piece of Mylar mocks you from the ceiling.
My security system today is amazing. Cameras and motion detectors send everything to my smartphone. I’ve had it for several years and I’m adding updates in a couple of weeks. Still, I just can’t escape the irony of it all. We’ve traded the open-door freedom of our childhood for a pocket full of push notifications. We are safer than ever, yet we spend evenings watching live streams of our own empty driveways, waiting for a threat that, thankfully, rarely comes.
We’ve locked the world out, but in doing so, we’ve locked ourselves into a state of permanent, high-tech anxiety. Scrolling through news stories about rising crime rates and increasing social hostilities.
Yet sometimes … when the night air is just right, I look at my deadbolt-locked doors and check the security camera video to see a ‘possum crossing my patio with a yogurt container pilfered from a trash can somewhere.
And I think about Dad’s old Chevrolet, sitting in the driveway all those years ago, with its keys in the ignition all night.
Still there and ready for duty the next morning.
—Leon Aldridge
(PHOTO — My high-tech security system captures another front porch intruder.)
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Leon Aldridge is a veteran editor, publisher, and communications professional, currently enjoying semi-retirement while awaiting the next big challenge. His columns appear in: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and in Motor Sports Magazine.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Feel free to use excerpts with full and clear credit given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling.’
