The aforementioned TG&Y. A chain of what were called “dime stores.” I know they were not local, but I did not know how extensive they were geographically until I saw the Wikipedia entry in the earlier post. It’s where most of my comic books and candy bars came from.
In Forth Worth we had Bill Martin’s seafood restaurants. I believe there was the original, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Edition. We went to the 2nd edition frequently since it was near my grandparents house.
Funny. I was just looking at the menu for an Italian restaurant near me that I’d never eaten at, and they had lemon ice on their dessert menu. It’s served in a half lemon as opposed to a cup, though. Oh, I’m in California.
When we used to eat out in Italian restaurants, they had two main options for dessert: spumoni and tortoni. I haven’t seen them anywhere in years.
We had Ames, Roses, Nickels stores. I was surprised to see a Roses recently in the Midwest. I figured it was a defunct regional chain.
For groceries, my hometown area had A&P (later Superfresh), IGA, and Giant Food. I don’t think any of those around anymore. I went “back home” recently and was surprised that despite all the development the grocery business seems to have retracted. It’s basically Walmart and Food Lion. Where I live now we have all the super Walmarts but also like 5-6 grocery chains, some of them have 2-3 of the same store within 5 miles or so.
Some stores pretty much arrived and left during my adulthood. Like Blockbuster and Circuit City didn’t arrive in my area until I was in my mid-teens but they were gone before I was 30.
Service Merchandise was another one from my youth. First place that gave me a credit card. One of my high school teachers worked in the jewelry department as his “real job.” I think they were gone a couple years later.
I can’t really think of any restaurants that weren’t local privately owned places. I guess Roy Rogers. They still exist but I’ve only seen them in Western Maryland. Sometimes I stop there on road trips but only if the timing is just right. The local ones turned into Hardees sometime in the 90s, then changed back then went vacant. Also there was a fish n chips place I think was a chain but I don’t remember the name.
Cock Robin, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and in college, Roy Rogers. Alas, no more.
I have a place that specializes in ices near me. No lemon - about 20 other flavors. The supermarket does not carry lemon ices either. Bay Area - maybe other parts of California are more rational.
Lemon ices did get sold at our town street fair - which is fairly big. Not for the past 4 years though.
Childhood birthday parties were at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour for a Zoo Sundae
As I got a bit older we would go to Old Spaghetti Factory. I just discovered that even though the Seattle location closed, there’s one in Lynnwood, so I can still get my spumoni ice cream fix. I didn’t realize it was a chain.
We stopped at many a Howard Johnson’s and I don’t remember any of the food. Just the peppermint stick ice cream.
And the first time I drove to high school, I drove my friends to Shakey’s for lunch. Really enjoyed the lunch buffet and even went there, along with the rest of the class, for some school-approved lunches with my history and English teachers.
No lemon? They’re all lemon ices. No matter what the flavor.
I grew up practically next door to this place:
Fortunately, it hasn’t disappeared since I was a kid. It’s still there.
I grew up in Queens and probably had some of their lemon ices, so you’re making my mouth water. Just the tubs of ices do it.
However the best I ever had was when I was 10 years old and living in what was then called Leopoldville in the Congo. The Mont Blanc ice cream shop had citroen ices which has been my standard ever since.
We have many wonderful things to eat in the Bay Area but lemon ices and pastrami are not two of them. And you can get good bialys, but you have to go to San Francisco for them.
Citron? Lemon in French. A car-flavored ice would be weird. 
We had a Sprouse-Reitz in the shopping center at the bottom of the hill of our neighborhood. That’s were it all started to go wrong.
They’re here in Honolulu. Just one.
I remember a Spaghetti Factory in San Diego. I had no clue it was a chain either.
Speaking of San Diego, I really liked Soup Plantation which was also Sweet Tomatoes as a chain. The chain folded this year. COVID was too much for it.
Bill Knapp’s. I loved that joint as a kid, especially their biscuits with butter and honey, served with their chicken or a la carte. It lasted long enough to take my kids there when we passed through Indiana, Ohio, or Michigan. We were crushed when passing through South Bend back in 2003, we discovered it was no more.
Coney Island restaurants in michigan. Loved their loosemeat ‘hamburgers’ served in a hot dog bun.
Prange’s department store lunch counter, in Sheboygan, WI. Damn fine hot dogs.
When I was a kid back in the 70s, we used to have a T. G. & Y up the street from us. In the summer, my mom and I would walk there every evening to get some exercise and poke around the store. They had a little bit of everything: a fabric section, record albums, candy, toys, all kinds of stuff. Loved that place. They were a chain, but I’m not sure I knew that at the time. I never saw another one.
There also used to be a store called The Akron in the larger town a few miles from my hometown. It was a strange store, and I think it was kind of like a smaller version of Big Lots–they got random shipments of whatever, and you pretty much never found the same thing twice there. Another one I loved poking through.
I miss the old-style Shakey’s, when they used to have long trestle tables and show old-timey movies on a big screen at the front. The pizza was pretty good, too, and especially the Mojo Potatoes.
Hey, it was the Congo. Anything happened there. 
But my French isn’t very good. And I never had one of those cars.
Funny, I was reading The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul last night, and the American character had a Citroen, and it was yellow. Which made me think how in the U.S. we call a dud car a “lemon.” And Citroen sounds so much like lemon. So “lemon” referring to a car must not mean the same thing in France. And it made me think of this thread. Dirk Gently is right. Everything is connected!
Wait, what? The Tea Company went away?
Has Burger Chef made an appearance in this thread? I loved Burger Chef as a child.