We had guests over for a minor living-room party Saturday night. I had got it in my head that we should have metallic-finish tinsely party-hats. Bad idea.

Did you know that these things fell out of fashion decades ago, and that Wal-Mart, Hallmark, Dollar Store, Dollaroo, [insert any hardware store], Michaels, none of these sell such hats. Maybe it’s seasons-oriented, so that come New Year’s, they’re all over the place.

During this long tour, which was sometimes directed by GOOG-411 calls, we talked about huge current department stores, and those of the past. Wal-Mart is the very definition of huge. No tinsel-hats, though. At its entrance, an employee who looked a lot like that white-haired gangster in The Sopranos pointed me the way to the party supplies shelf. He cut a sad figure in his blue vest when he said: “They won’t let me leave this area here, so I can’t walk you to the shelf.” Reminder: got to see those documentaries around that chain of stores.

Our party came out just excellent. A newborn infant plus her parents who popped in for a moment were the youngest of the bunch. I heard some fine stories.

Sarah, artist, said: ‘Me and Roy met in the very same bar my grandfather met my grandmother. They also fell in love right there.’