Everyone I know likes freebies, something gotten free merely for patronizing a business. Unlike BOGOs where you must buy one of an item to get another free, or coupons with price limitations, freebies are like the piece of candy given by some shops for going in to browse. Or samples at stores pushing the sale of specific items, or even the free cup of coffee at some bank
But the freebies I’m nostalgic of are real items tha you could take home to use.
I still have three knives as gifts for buying gas during our early years of marriage when there were stations at practically every intersection on busy streets competing for business. You could buy five gallons of gas for a dollar and they even filled your tank for you. The knives aren’t the ordinary utility knives, but specialty ones: a small boning knife with a thin blad excellent for testing the doness of cakes, meatloves or fruit breads and muffins. A grapefruit knife useful for cutting through the rinds and segments of oranges and lemons besides grapefruits; and a tomato knife intended for the vegetable(or fruit if you prefer to call it that)and for slicing small cakes and breads.
Older friends who remember going to the movies during the Great Depression relate how they were given glassware just for attending. They weren’t blown glass but now are valued as collectible “Depression glass.”
Another freebie that’s disappeared are blue and green stamps. Markets and other stores gave stamps depending on the amount of one’s purchase. We pasted them in a book, and when filled, could shop for items listed in a catalog at the redemption store. The catalogs were like “wish books” from Sears or Montgomery Ward’s except no money was exchanged and items valuable to the savers could be saved for.
When I was a newly wed and hadn’t accumulated a hope chest, we went to the stamp store for a four-piece dinner set for our first dishes. And one summer in college, a housemate suddenly announced she was marrying one weeken. We had no money for a gift but had a book of green stamps to redeem for a silver plated candy dish. It looked silvery but probably cheap chrome. “Buit it’s the thouugh that counts,” we rationalized.
Now the closest to freebis are “points” accumulated with “loyalty cards” at some markets for discounted gas or equivalent goods.
I realize rising costs contribute to profit margins and businesses can’t afford to give freebies as generously as in the past, but should there be a charge for everything as in the banks where they’ll gladly take your deposits but charge for everything else that used to be free such as check books or other services? Or airlines that charge for baggage and reluctantly offer drinks instead of including meals or even snacks? The list of “free” is practically unknown, or there is a caveat: you’ve paid for it in the price! But now there are more billionaires than before and some freebies would make all of us feel we are sharing some of the wealth without the widening gap of HAVES and HAVE NOTS.
