Now it’s certain. The world is obviously bent on destroying everything that I have ever loved, enjoyed or found necessary.

I discovered that I could live — unhappily, mind you — without Hutzler’s and Hochschild’s; I substituted Miller and Rhoads and Thalhimers’. Just as well; Richmond stores were just as stylish. Until they disappeared. I then had to learn to live with Woodward and Lothrop, which was a close second anyway, and its big downtown store was beautiful. I also subsisted with periodic injections of Wanamakers. Those went away too and I was left — bereft of department stores and all but one movie palace — with only the grand old restaurants to fall back upon.

(To be fair, there are also a bunch of stodgy old-line Catholic churches but those only really fill the bill early Sunday morning when I’m usually hung over anyway.)

One by one, the nice old restaurants have closed; I’ll never again be able to indulge in chilled strawberry soup and schnitzel Paprikasz under the watchful eyes of the naked Aurora chez Haussner.

And now I discover, courtesy of the Capital City Desk (a.k.a. Lisa) that the New York Deli is closing.

This is not fair. I was not adequately informed of this. Had I been, I’d have laid in seven hundred pounds of smoked eel and would have bought a basement freezer for the purpose, to say nothing of ten years’ worth of reuben sandwiches (Richmond style, thanks, with tomato sauce). I’ve never been quite sure why it was called the “New York” deli. It did serve things that one would never have otherwise found in Richmond, but it managed to put a delicious Richmond twist on nearly everything it served, which automatically made its food product tastier than anything I’ve ever eaten in that pestilent city on the Hudson.

Many will immediately respond, “Oh, if you’d eaten in New York, you’d know.” I have, and I do. The only place I’ve ever found there worth my patronage is Junior’s, in Brooklyn, whose praises I’ve sung here before. (Those praises are best performed accompanied by the mammoth Wurlitzer at the big Paramount across the street.) The New York Deli, despite its distance from its eponymous city, served superlative food — and, unlike pretty much any place in Gotham, had absolutely no confusion about serving iced tea in hangover-drowning quantity.