And now we say farewell to the phone book, another victim of the electronic age. No longer will the white pages be handed out routinely in large cities because all the information is supposedly online.

But I am going to miss those white pages. I found it fascinating to look up names. I go back to a time when newspapers would try to write clever stories on the yearly edition of the phone book. (For example, from 1959:
Q: What has three Legges and only one Foote? A: The new Regina telephone book.)

But the vanishing of the white pages is just one of the many changes taking place at warp speed. The end of the paper cheque is forecast over the next few years. Again, because so much is electronic. I’m fighting a losing battle against this, but even so, I am being twisted into paying bills online.

For one, I will miss the utility and beauty of cheques. Utility because in the old days, one could exchange a series of cheques with fellow writers a couple of days before payday. None of us had money in the bank, but cheque clearing was so slow that by the time the cheque was debited, our pay had been deposited. (I have a feeling this was illegal; it may have been called “kiting.”)

As for the beauty of cheques, I once did a small piece for The Observer in London and they sent me a cheque for £5. It was so ornate, I never cashed it. I also have a cheque from a Canadian publisher who owed me money. The cheque was for 10¢; I never cashed it, either.

As you must know, more is slipping away than just cheques and phone books. For one, the ordinary car mechanic who operated out of what we used to call a “service station.” Perhaps not totally vanished but certainly endangered. Some amenities have gone, such as camera film from my local store. And also razor blades. And have you tried to buy an egg beater recently?

One item I tried to get was a radio. I ambled into the giant electronics store and made my way past the silver washing machines, which offer night-school courses to teach you how to use them. I found a knot of young men in black between the cellphones and the flat-screen TVs.

“I want to buy a radio,” I said.

They looked at me with wild surprise. One of them replied: “A radio?”

“A simple radio,” I said.

After they put their heads together, one of them figured out what a radio was and he took me over to a shelf with several shiny devices. Radios that interacted with TVs and iPods and discs. And made coffee.

“A simple radio,” I said. “For listening to music. No fancy stuff.”

As you must have guessed, there is no simple radio anymore. I finally made it out of the store with one that opens my automatic garage door every time I listen to the FM band.

If you are searching for skills that are vanishing, you might take a look at typing. Years ago, I taught myself to touch type and, until the past few weeks, it has been handy. But then I activated my new BlackBerry. (Well, not that new: I’ve had it for more than a year but have been afraid of it.) Anyway, I got it fired up. It has a screen that I had to read with a magnifying glass, and I decided to send a few emails. As a modern person, you will know where this is going. It has a typewriter keyboard on which one can’t type. Not unless you have surgically reduced fingers. Instead, it told me to tap, not type. And with my thumbs — a skill that appears beyond me.

I’ve been able to send one email by holding the device down with my left hand and poking at it with a pencil. A 20-word message takes half an hour and many swear words.

What other old favourites have vanished along with phone books and book books and radios and cheques and actually typing?

How about this? I dropped into a backwoods diner one afternoon, a place where I used to have the lumberman’s breakfast when I was a kid. They had pesto and sushi and Stilton cheeseburgers on the menu.

I put that aside. “Gimme a hot beef sandwich,” I said to the waitperson.

“Wassat?” she said.

“The usual,” I said. “Gray beef, two slices of white bread, a tin of gravy, mashed potatoes and steamed peas.”

“Not here, buddy,” she said. “But you can have the mussels with chopped artichokes or a reduction of squid with caramelized onions.”

I went home and had a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s a hard world. IE