Out back in the shed, I keep yard stuff and a few items for the very few auto and truck maintenance chores I am qualified to undertake (changing the oil and vacuuming the floor mats seem to be the entire list these days.) Rummaging out there the other day for either duct tape or WD40 - if you have those two items plus a good Arrow stapler, you can handle most any spot repairs - I found an old funnel that I use for pouring oil into the crankcase of the car or truck.
I'm not talking about the price of oil here. It was the price of the funnel that caught my eye. It's so old, it was bought in the day when stores affixed a little gummy sticker bearing the price of an item directly onto the item. Before bar codes and UPC numbers and self-serve checkout stations, this was how they did things. It's interesting to note that I paid $1.69 for this funnel, what, 30 years ago? (It's had more oil poured through it than Halliburton pipelines!) Also interesting that I bought it at a drug store - Drug Fair, to be exact, whose motto was, "Don't say drug store, say Drug Fair: there's a difference!". Drug Fair became Revco, which then became CVS, which will never become the place I would head for when I need to buy a new funnel. That's also a difference.
No, my destination of choice for funnels, books that were just at Barnes and Noble two weeks ago for $24.95, catsup, shower gels and greeting cards is the wonderful Dollar Tree chain. You go there today, and you can have three funnels of varying sizes, nested together and held with a plastic string, for one dollar.
NPR had a story this morning about people who never thought to shop at "the Tree," as we in the know call it, until this economic downturn forced them to stop calling noodles "pasta" and hair goo, "product." We welcome our new friends to the marvelous adventure of strolling down the aisles of the Tree, green basket in hand, happily tossing in one-dollar picture frames and one-dollar foot-itch powder. Nothing's out of date, nothing's stale, nothing's rancid.
To those beginners, though, one caveat: better stop at Try'n'Buy on the way home, and stick with the big-name famous brands of razor blades and toilet paper. You only have one face, and, well.....
3 comments:
Mark, it was "don't say drug store, say Drug Fair, there's a BIG difference!" Not just any old difference. A BIG one!
I spent a summer of my pre-adolescent youth making as many words as I could out of the letters in that sentence for a contest. I think it was the same summer I started a murder mystery about somebody poisoning the glue in S&H trading stamps. (Or was it Top Value???) Anyway, I had hundreds of words but didn't win the contest, and the mystery went nowhere....
I enjoyed this today. I know the funnel to which you refer, and you just had to use that word - affixed!!! Maybe you could let Angie know about it!!! HAHA!
Too bad here in Wal-Mart land(NW Arkansas) all 3 Dollar Tree's closed in the last 2 years...(Like I'm gonna go to the Supercenter for my non -food- product needs.) Boycotting the 2 supercenters and 2 sam's clubs in my hometown for like 3 years now, I managed just fine without them because of the Dollar Tree. How could they have gone out of business??? By the way, they boycott could be strictly psychological rather than idealistic, i simply HATE the scene at a wal-mart supercenter-makes me cringe to be an American, what with all the carts overflowing with crap and the obese people waddling around buying more cheaply made crap....white trash people yelling at their kids, plus you aren't getting out of there for under a $100 just as a rule. Not to mention the psycho lighting and the enormous parking lot. Oh, how I lament the loss of the Dollar Tree.
sorry so harsh-this really struck a chord in me!
Post a Comment