My grandparents and great-grandparents lived in Chicago. We would visit them regularly, the apogee of each day occurring at about 6:30 p.m.: Dinnertime, often out, often Midwest-fancy, beginning with cocktails and cellophane-wrapped cracker baskets, ending with some snarling wrestle over who was picking up the check.

Well, that's not exactly how it would end. After dinner, my brother and I leaped into action. I was six years his senior, so I controlled the details of the heist. Often, I would enlist him to create a diversion, at which point I would hoof it to the mint bowl--loose buttermints, individually wrapped minty chocolates or, worst-case scenario, Starlight mints--filling each pocket on the down low. Slicker than the Artful Dodger, I'd be fresh-breathed for hours, sharing the wealth with my brother in the back of the slow-moving Buick piloted by my grandfather.

That was when restaurants routinely gave you stuff for free. This piece about matches in the New York Timesgot me thinking about all the stuff we used to get. A dorky, pencil-necked kid, I was a maniacal collector of stuff. From restaurants, I collected those individually wrapped sugar cubes with the scenes on them, frilly toothpicks, cool bendy straws, cocktail umbrellas and really any other non-perishable cocktail adornment (those brightly colored plastic mermaids the absolute best haul).  Matches were vetoed by the benevolent dictators in my life, but there sure were some cool ones in little boxes and lipstick-sized tubes.

Then there were the kids' freebies. I could do without the little boxes of crayons, the quality of which was usually so low that it was like drawing a picture with a candle or waxed dental floss. I think the very best one I ever got was something called Wikki Stix, these bendable waxed strings that you mold into tabletop creatures.

I suppose this is all leading up to a lament about the economic squeeze that has necessitated doing away with these little niceties. Bring back the mermaids and buttermints, I entreat.