We have learned, and continue to be surprised, that many things we considered to be around forever, with great fervor, are disappearing.

It's difficult when, for example, department stores become victims of "progress" and become, for lack of a better word, extinct.

It's happening.

Social historian Jan Whitaker says department stores "fashioned the middle class."

They were "the arbiter of middle-class taste and lifestyles," she says. "From the 1920s into the 1960s, stores exercised an almost moral authority to define in material terms what it was to live as a middle-class American."

Such stores, especially during the holidays, evoke nostalgia.

In her new book, "Service and Style" (St. Martin's Press, $35), Ms. Whitaker takes us back to those years when my generation, our mothers and grandmothers, could never have imagined such stores disappearing.

The book is an encyclopedia of history from the beginnings in the 1890s to the present. It shows how they prospered and then declined. Department stores symbolized a city's wealth, creativity and energy. They always occupied major buildings in our downtown and were the pulse of the cities.

We, of course, can relate primarily to the heyday of Joseph Horne, Kaufmann's and Gimbels.

We ate in their tea rooms, met under their clocks, had first jobs selling books, fine china, fragrance and ready-to-wear.

You could buy something as big as a piano or as small as a button. It's where you bought your Easter bonnet as well as your stove, your girdle or your sofa, custom face powder and fine art. Then you would have lunch, never leaving the building.

We barely noticed when certain departments were phased out. Now these stores are gone.

Reasons for the changes are varied, but the book fills the consumer in on business decisions and how such operations live or die. It's far more complicated than pretty window displays and tradition.

"While the grand old department store has all but vanished now," Ms. Whitaker writes, "many Americans still have an enduring affection for the department stores of yesterday."

And isn't that the truth? We experienced it and benefitted from the department store's long life. We are swathed in memories.

I remember the finest in fashion in Vendome and the Galleries, the many fashion shows, the model display rooms on the furniture floors, visits with Santa (at each store), the incredible foreign fairs throughout the stores, the escalators, the designer visits, the special candy, caramel coconut ice cream balls, tissue-wrapped garments, window displays, free delivery, millinery departments, tea rooms and, best of all, notable and knowledgeable sales people who took great pride in pleasing you. A few remain, not many.

The department store was part of our lives in quite a different way than the mall stores, even when branches opened there.

I'm grateful for Macy's, now our only major Downtown store, and not just because its flagship store in New York City brings us the magical Thanksgiving Day parade.

I hope the sentiment we have for Kaufmann's and the past doesn't keep people from shopping there.

Viewing the wonderful holiday windows at Fifth and Smithfield keeps our memories of all our former department stores alive, even if somewhat blurred by time.

For how long? Time will tell.