Market Giveaways Are Not a Free Lunch

My wife has a sneaky way of trapping me into going grocery shopping with her. I’ve nothing much against shopping for groceries, but it seems to me that it’s highly inefficient for two people to do a job that one can do just as well, especially when I’ve an interesting construction job going on in the garage.

She works it this way: I announce that I must visit Wright’s Hardware for some particular springs and little brass hinges so I can make some spring-loaded hinges for a magic trick I’m making.

“Oh, can I ride along? I love that store,” she remarks. “And then I’ll buy our lunch at the Chinese restaurant.”

Now, who can resist an invitation like that? Besides, I’m hungry. She carefully doesn’t mention the fact she’s got a grocery list as long as her arm.

She only mentions the grocery store after the hardware store and lunch. And then it’s only that she just remembered she needs some basil and a few more tomatoes for the sauce for dinner.

I don’t care to wait for her in the car, so I innocently enter the store with her. Experience has shown me that when she takes a shopping cart instead of basket, I’ve been had once again. But it’s too late to back out now, so like the gentleman that I am, I offer to push the cart.

Now, if my wife weren’t an inveterate reader, the shopping ordeal would be over in half the time. She reads every word on every can and package while comparing weights and prices of various products. And if there are saleswomen in the store passing out samples of new food products, she stops and samples the offered tidbits.

I dislike this sort of thing. I try to give these vendors wide berth, even if it means wheeling down an aisle I had had no intention of going down. My wife, on the other hand, enjoys eating her way around a grocery store. There was a woman passing out little pieces of hot pizza the other day. My wife not only contrived to eat two of the woman’s tidbits, she also bought four of the woman’s frozen pizzas.

At the turn of the century, a man could order a beer in a saloon and eat a free lunch laid out on the bar. It’s a popular saying that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, which, I assume, cropped up after saloon keepers found that some customers were costing them more in food than they drank in beer.

Today, if you schedule your food markets carefully, people such as my wife can eat a free lunch in the aisles, anything from cheese and crackers to little meatballs on toothpicks. Of course, it’s impossible today to eat enough to even begin to offset your grocery bill.

It used to be you could spend $20 on groceries and fill up the back of your car. Today, the same money will buy just enough to fit in the glove compartment.

There’s one thing I like about modern supermarkets that wasn’t available in the good old days. It’s their hardware department--everything from pots and pans to pliers and can openers. I always make my wife stop and look with me. There’s only one problem, though. It’s the plastic packaging that most small parts and tools come in. It seems that the fellow who invented that packaging never intended to actually use what’s inside.

You need the skills of a safecracker to open up that tough cardboard and plastic. I bought some screws in that kind of packaging, and when I got it open the screws erupted all over room.

The next time my wife cons me into grocery shopping with her, there’s one giveaway I would fall for. I read where the company that used to make Black Jack licorice-flavored chewing gum is going to market it again. I used to love that gum as a kid. The minute the flavor started to chew away, I’d pop another stick in my mouth. I’ve had as many as five sticks at a time in my mouth.

My plan is to wheel by the woman giving away sticks of Black Jack five times. I’m anxious to see if I can still do it nearly 60 years later without choking to death.