Gas Station Freebies

I was visiting my daughter Briana at her new apartment and I needed a knife to open something. Her roommate went into the kitchen drawer and handed me one. And when I saw it I was transported back in time. The handle was dark brown plastic--molded to look like wood. The blade was thin, serrated and bendable-- yet still sharp after 40 or so years. It was a Shell (brand) Steak knife---the kind given away for free during the 1960’s every time one filled up their gas tank.

Because there once was a time when gas stations actually needed to solicit your business.

Gas stations do not give away anything for free anymore. The energy crisis of the 1970’s halted that little perk. Rarely can you even get your gas pumped for you while waiting in the car—and if you do, the station charges you a few cents more per gallon. No one routinely cleans the windshield or checks the oil or measures the air your tires.

 It is something you must ask for, or do yourself.

Maps are no longer sold. There is no pay phone or a filthy bathroom to use for emergencies only. I do not even know the name of the man who owns the station near me. But I do know, it isn’t Jim or  Sal—the men I remember from my youth.

There is no more service with a smile.

But last week the world changed--everything old was new again—and I am not talking about  the S&H green stamps from Texaco,  a green plastic Brontosaurus from Sinclair, steak knives from Shell, or some amber glasses from Esso. It was the odd/even gas rationing. It was the hour-long lines and the “cash only.”

I didn’t exactly feel all that nostalgic about it.

And I asked Kelly, Briana’s roommate where she had gotten the knives—they were a treasure—a collector’s item of sorts. She told me that the knives had belonged to her grandmother. And I smiled. Not only did my family have those same steak knives but my grandmother did too—she got them every time she filled up her 1962 Rambler and then her 1968 Dodge Coronet--- back in the day when people put a tiger in their tank and trusted their car to the man who wore the star.