Amtrak estimated nine hours travel time from Charleston, SC to Ft. Lauderdale. Scheduled to board at six, I cracked the dawn with depot coffee and the first page of Gunter Grass’ The Tin Drum.
The depot dappled with the broken smiles and bleary eyes of travel. We were all waiting for the first glimpse of the train to button through the distance. When the train didn’t arrive, the depot stirred with tension. Transformed from mere waiting room into something much more cruel and disruptive, I chuckled as Grass’ hero, the beneficent hellion Oskar Matzerath, opened the tale with this disclaimer, “Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital.”
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