If I asked for a show of hands, I'd bet that everyone gets their gasoline today from a convenience store or mega-grocery store. We'd be hard pressed to find someone who still goes to an actual filling station. Yes, I know there's not too many of them left, but there's a few still around. Needless to say, back in the day that was the only place to get your gasoline. In addition to gas, they would always check your oil and other fluids in your car, and they would wash your windshield. When you filled up, you got more than points added to your rewards card; you got something tangible. And it was free, too.
Back in the 60s and 70s before the first oil crisis, gas stations would give you cool free stuff just for filling up at their station. I'll admit the concept seems odd in a day when we fill up at the pump using our credit or debit card and 99% of the time don't even come in contact with a clerk. When you do have to see the clerk (usually when you want to pay for your gas with cash - yet another odd concept today) chances are they're not going to give you a free plate.
One of the coolest freebies from the filling stations was Marathon's Apollo glasses and juice pitcher. Of course, we had the entire set at one time. And of course, over time we broke most of the set. But we still have two of the glasses today, down in the basement in the archives. They were awesome glasses, and I remember wanting to drink my Tang out of one, just like I thought the astronauts did.
My favorite of the filling station freebies was the Walt Disney placemats from Gulf. yep, you guessed it; we had the entire collection. It helped that my Dad was good friends with the Jerry, the owner of the Gulf station in our 'hood. They were beige on one side and had different Disney characters on the other. I remember that I always had to eat off of the Jiminy Cricket placemat, even though the rest of the family preferred to have their placemats with the picture side down.
3 comments:
We had the Apollo glasses also. Never got the juice decanter though. I'm pretty sure they are still in Mom & Dad's basement on the book shelf.
I also remember a very large (about 3 ft tall) inflatable green dinosaur that I had as a child. Somewhere there's a snapshot of my Mom vaccuuming the rug and the dinosaur is on the couch in the background. I beleive it came from Sunoco. Didn't they have the dinosaur mascot??
Also, I wish the service station attendants still wore the tight lttle white uniforms and hat instead of the sagging drawers they wear today.
Why, yes Mamakinsdf, you're absolutely right. Sunoco had the green dinosaur (note: I did some quick research and my sources tell me it was actually a brontosaurus.) as their mascot. We had a Sunoco station just up the street, but we never patronized them because we were a Gulf family.
We always looked forward to the yearly festival hosted by Sinclair Oil (now Chevron) in which children received plastic dinosaurs molded at the site. Older readers may remember the mascot of Sinclair Oil being the beloved green brontosaurus. The festival was held in the parking lot of what formerly housed the Woolco store on Preston Highway. This was in the late 1960s and the festival drew in throngs of reluctant parents incessantly chided by the plaintive cries of children begging to receive a still warm replica of one of four species of dinosaurs made of plastic (which of course is a derivative of petroleum). My parents are finally downsizing in their old age and cleaning out the attic and basement closets so I expect my Sinclair Stegosaurus will appear anytime now.
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