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Published on 08/18/1997 All articles from this issue

And here's your free gift

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By Mary Cristy

A View from the Hills

It began with a DeLonghi oven, a gift from my sister Vi after we'd exchanged views on summers that are hotter than Billy-be-damned. While she sweltered in a Bronx apartment Vi lent a patient ear to my plaints about how hot our kitchen got on summer afternoons when, despite the 90 degree temperature, I still craved a baked potato for supper.

"I've got this wonderful little oven...." she said. I failed to hear the wheels turning until it was too late to dissuade her. Within the week a countertop oven was delivered-Vi's generous response to our August potato famine. "You get a free gift with it." The oven more than halved cooking time and generated minimal heat. Truly a little gem. The free gift followed swiftly. A pizza stone. Makes crisp, crunchy pizzas. That's Italian. We offered the pizza stone to our visiting kids from Sonora.

"Thanks, Mom. Had one once. Never used it. But hey, they're great for bread!"

I swore off baking bread last summer after we gave the kids our heavy-duty mixer. Half a century of creating balanced, if not inspired meals, calls into play the law of diminishing returns. We stored the pizza stone in the tool shed. Might come in handy some day as a gift recycle.

Then Cris, reviewing the copious literature that came with the oven, was moved by an ad for six Omaha steaks. With a bonus of six hamburgers. What with mad-cow disease, and the grunge that passes for cattle food these days, the charm of beef has tarnished. But this was a dynamite offer, $45 worth of choice meat for a mere $26.

The Omaha steaks arrived with the swiftness of an Indian runner. Packed in a "free" Styrofoam cooler, our six filet mignons and gourmet burgers were delivered with a four-piece scissor set, a baby boom box, (no relation to babies, this is a mini-suitcase-size radio,) a disk for 50 free minutes online, and a catalog. The catalog, and additional fliers, offered a "two for the price of one" best-buy on flowers, a three-issue free subscription to Bottom Line, and a cookbook. Some of the incomparable enticements offered by Bottom Line include, "How to know when a slot machine is ready to pay off," "Lottery numbers that increase your chance of claiming biggest prize," "What airlines won't tell you," "What phone companies won't tell you," and an enigmatic recommendation to "Use postage stamps to solve male impotence problem." One balks at an attempt to plumb the inherent possibilities of this last offer.

Bottom Line's further promises tips to "Outwit mugger in self-service elevator," "Bills it's OK to pay late," and "What never to eat on an airplane."

We're at a loss as how to deal with this embarrassment of riches. Cris still has a pocket watch that came with Reader's Digest Music last year, (Our kids said anybody who listens to Reader's Digest Music deserves a pocket watch) and a chocolate hammer, a bonus from Sears for a manuscript written last December. We'd like to avail ourselves of Bottom Line's three issues, but the prospect of more free gifts gives us pause.

If the trend to reward, (or overwhelm) catalog customers with "stuff" continues, we'll need another storage shed and a truck to transport the overflow to a local resale shop.

Mary Cristy is a Los Altos Hills-based free-lance writer and longtimecontributor to theTown Crier.