Every mornin’, I get up, I shave, get dressed, and make my way down to the train. I try to time it as closely as I can so that I’m not wastin’ no time on the platform, but the train gets there late sometime. You see, the platform is where all the trouble is gonna happen if there’s gonna be some. That don’t mean there has to be. Most folks mind their own business. They don’t got not time for a man holdin’ an old umbrella. Sure, they got themselves busy lives. But I watch them. Not in a bad way, but just maybe payin’ attention a little more closely than other folks do.
So, you know, you ride in a railroad train long enough you get to know faces. Some people, they commute every day, but others just take the train when they got a problem with their car or somethin’. Still others, well, they go down to the train station just because they’s drawn to the folks standin’ around on the platform, and those is the ones you got to watch. Continue reading “The Umbrella Man Watches”
“When people see a man walking with an umbrella in the sun, they look up at the sky. What for? They’ve got an app on their phone ten times more powerful than their dang eyes. What they should be askin’ is, ‘Why that guy have an umbrella on a sunny day? We ain’t had no rain in a spell. What he up to?’ But nah, they never ask that.