Topographia (top-o-graf’-i-a): Description of a place. A kind of enargia [: {en-ar’-gi-a} generic name for a group of figures aiming at vivid, lively description].
I live in a cave in Stanhope, New Jersey. It used to be an iron mine. It sheltered Revolutionary War soldiers from the British. In World War II it served as a bomb shelter for the mayor. Fugitives have hidden out there. The most famous was Chick Bultaco. He stole hubcaps for a living. He didn’t make much money, but he reigned supreme. You’d go to bed at night and wake up in the morning to see your Ford Pinto in the driveway, stripped of its hubcaps. He sold the stolen hubcaps to hippies who decorated their windows and bedrooms with them. He had the audacity to install them. That’s how he got caught. Two police officers disguised themselves as hippies and put the word out on the street that they needed some hubcaps to hang in their windows and bedrooms. The cops rented a house and Chick showed up with a boxful of Chevy Bel-Aire hubcaps to install and collect the money. He was arrested, tried and convicted and was sentenced to to three years. He was famous! After he served his sentence, he opened a junkyard in Morristown, NJ. He could pull and sell hubcaps legitimately. End of story,
It was difficult, but I’ve wallpapered the cave with horizontal striped green and blue wallpaper. There’s a mirror on the wall. I have a brown metal folding chair and a small white plastic end table. I have a green candle embedded in dripped wax on top of the table. It is my sole source of light. I’ve hung a table cloth over the cave entrance for privacy and to keep out the weather. I sleep on sandbags covered with a rubber tarp. It gets cold in the winter, but I don’t mind. Bathing is tricky.
I work delivering newspapers. They are dropped off every morning. I fold them up and deliver them. Sometimes, I wish I had graduated from high school.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu.
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