In the 1930s two mapmakers put a town that didn’t exist at a dirt crossroads in the Catskills and called it Agloe, an anagram of their initials. It was a trap: if Agloe ever turned up on a rival’s map, they’d know they had been copied. Some years later it did turn up, and the rival had an answer. Someone had since built a general store at the crossroads and named it the Agloe General Store, because that was what the map said the place was called. The copy was accurate. The forgery had come true. I have a soft spot for places that were drawn before anyone lived in them.