Let’s see, there are so many of them I miss. But I miss the actual restaurants and nightclubs called Stouffer’s, Schrafft’s, Horn & Hardart, the Forum of the 12 Caesars, Romeo Salta, Quo Vadis, the Stork Club, El Morocco, Toots Shor’s and the Blue Angel and the Bon Soir. But I see you are thinking of "brands" one used to see in advertising. How about RCA: His Master’s Voice … Lucky Strike Green … Hostess Fruit Pies … the Edsel, Pontiacs, Thunderbirds, etc. On the other hand, if you tune in to TV’s "Mad Men" you’ll discover a number of defunct brands.

And while we’re in this vein of thinking, how about the ad campaign devised by the ad genius Mary Wells Lawrence (now of wOw fame). Who can ever forget her productions of "I Love New York," with its attendant music and its VIP stars?

I don’t miss brands so much as I miss the way we lived in earlier periods of my life. For instance, my father used to get up from the dinner table about once a week and say, "Let’s go to a movie." And we’d all jump up and have no idea what was playing at either theater in Phoenix, walk in in the middle of the movie, have no problem with understanding what was going on, and at some later point my father would say, "Let’s go. This is where we came in." No young person today would have the slightest notion of what "this is where we came in" means; it is a phrase that is forever gone from the language.