So Long to the Names That Anchored Our Lives : Change: Stor became Ikea and Vons became Rons. Van de Kamps and others just vanished.

I read it in the paper. Ikea was buying Stor. Then the “Going Out of Business Sale” ads came, and I hurried to get to the City of Industry before Stor disappeared. Walking through the half-empty areas and remembering what had been there, I was saying goodby to a place that I had only recently welcomed.

This is not new for me. Saying goodby. Everytime I walk into the Wilshire May Co., I’m saying goodby and remembering the days that I said goodby to Ohrbachs. I’ve said goodby to Van de Kamps--only a few windmills remain--and to the Wilshire Dupars--now an empty lot--and to the afternoon sun on the Rexall Drugs at Beverly and La Cienega. Goodby to Barker Brothers and Akron and, for a time, Sav-On Drugs, which became Osco and then returned in name only. And the ghost of Pickwick still haunts B. Dalton.

There have been goodbys to corner gas stations and to the out-of-business stores in the mini-malls that replaced them. One day, I took my Vons coupons to their Sunset market. The cashier told me that it was now Rons. Goodby. Goodby to the phones no longer in the Sunset Ralphs’ parking lot, gone when, filled with groceries, my car stalled and I needed them. Goodby to Woolworths and Newberrys, to Ships and Dolores’. Goodby to Tiny Naylors Drive In on Sunset, where my husband and I ate in the car while our baby slept.

When the time came, my young son climbed on top of Bob’s Big Boy and kissed him goodby. As we head out for ice cream at Hobson’s, now called Scoops, he quips, “Do you think it’s still there?” At age 11, he’s had his share of goodbys.

In the last scene of the movie, “Avalon,” a grandfather tells his grandson about visiting the old neighborhood. Nothing was left, except for a nightclub that he once owned. “Thank God that was there, because, for a moment I thought I didn’t exist at all.”