This is probably the most visually interesting building I’ve found here in Roanoke, Virginia — the Roanoke Typewriter Sales Company on Campbell Avenue.  It’s just past the east edge of downtown, on the other side of the tracks, in the shadow of the overpass.  It has a quasi-wedge shape that’s hemmed in closely at the rear by adjacent train tracks, and at its top is a billboard like a great, garish tiara.

If this isn’t the setting for a short story, I don’t know what is.

(May 2025.)