Lost Commonplaces

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This was the (inappropriate) title of the poem below, but now that that's done, and retitled, I can pose the question I originally intended, the fruit of vain insomniac speculation: to wit, what are the brand names that will be joining Ozymandias soon. I think it amazing that there are no A & P's any more. It spanned the continent in my childhood, as the P & O ruled the waves. But there were other smaller chains, specific to limited limited locals and neighborhoods. Piggly-Wiggly (in the South?) And there was one sprinkled about rural Minnesota at just above the mom-and-pop level. They had their own brand with a homely name. Which I can't remember. Maybe the whole world has forgot it as they'd forgotten Ozymandias. I notice that the AOL news site had a teaser about big chains soon to be extinct: Rite-Aid drugstores, Old Navy, Lane and Bryant. I have a small plastic shaker of talc with a Rite Aid price sticker on it. Maybe it will become a collectible! But maybe no one will care. Did Aeschylus and Shakespeare sprinkle brand names through their work? Of course they couldn't, even if they tried, as there weren't any. Shakespeare probably made much sly reference to taverns and their signboards. So here's the question? Which are the first brand names to be mentioned in World Literature. A "Toledo blade" doesn't count. I mean a true brand name like Coca-Cola. "August Light" opens with the heroine buying sardines and soda crackers at a country store, but we aren't told the brand of sardines or the name of the store. Sinclair Lewis called cars by their given names, but Henry James or Dickens or Balzac, all noted for their "realism"? I don't know why I should be doing TLS's work for them, except that it's 4 am and I'm awake.

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