Nixed crates of camp stoves, backup propane canisters, empty 2-liters that once served as emergency urinals. Used and unused paper towels. Used and unused cloth towels. Boxes of books, maps, notebooks. Candles, candleholders, functional and unfunctional headlamps. Empty Red Bull cans, 5-hour Energy bottles, and Marlboro Red packs, wedged beneath my desk, from back when I used to drink Red Bulls, 5-hour Energies, and smoke Marlboro Reds.

Disassembled my makeshift, upturned, no-spill, 5-gal. Arrowhead ‘sink station.’ Broke down my ‘closet’—the yard-long, inch-wide, wooden cylinder I’d L-bracketed into the box’s upper, driver-side corner, hung hangers off.

Removed the fold-down futon. The emergency sleeping bags/blankets—garage sale–nabbed parkas, jackets.

Swept. Swiffered.

Redid the window and ceiling Reflectix insulation.

Aired that bitch out.

The box would be out in the open now.

Open to scrutiny, inspection.

Would be integral to my survival, like it had been before, when I lived in it, only now from the income it, as a tool, would supply.

The veggies it would house.

I’d be making rent ($350) fortnightly.

Fkn ballin bruh.

Mom I made it.

Cracked the hood and loaded up on fluids—coolant, engine oil—that first day. Something I never did till the thing stalled out, started smoking, before.

Started reading my 8.5" x 11", 400 pp 1993 G Van Model Service Manual and my 1993 G Van Model Service Manual only.

Learning to not do all sorts of shit I’d been doing.

Did an #amreading tweet of its cover.

It didn’t get any likes, but I was proud of it.

I legit never went north of my spot, in the near two years I’d lived where I lived, save for the stray Lowe’s mish.

No reason to.

Not only no relevant amenities that way, but it got abruptly and drastically hood.

The warehouse HQ was straight north, up 41st, zigging and zagging to accommodate weird, one-way loopholes, to Girard. Then right, across the Schuylkill. Then fishhooking north, along the riverbank, all the way up past Strawberry Mansion, to where it linked with diagonal-ass Ridge. Where diagonal-ass Ridge curved back into the grid momentarily. Before splitting off of Ridge and onto W Hunting Park. Up W Hunting Park a ways.

Stopping at reds on those initial northbound mishes feeling like I was pulling up in a tank. Especially so at that first one, where 41st met Lancaster. Mad people posted at it, eying me like tf.

Feeling like I was a soldier doing a humanitarian aid mish.

Or maybe an offensive-invasive one.

Although, over time, less so.

Over time, with the buffer of the gig—of not pulling up stealthy, blacking out the windows, breathing outta the ceiling vent and peeing in empty water bottles for a night.

Of instead just being a guy driving.

Adhering to traffic rules, eye out for pedestrians who weren’t.

Over time, noting all sorts of new spots north of me to hit.