On Tuesday, March 30, early in the morning, I took the commuter train from Grand Central Station to Valley Stream, Long Island. The station was abustle, as it was every working day, with what one writer termed the “wage slaves” arriving from throughout the Metropolitan area to put in their eight hours of labor in the offices and skyscrapers of the great city. As the eternal outsider, I observed how most of the men were well-dressed, with suits and ties, leather shoes, the femmes in skirts and high-heels. The snack bars and newsstands were doing a lively business and there were always one or two people hovering around the Information booth in the center of the vast ground floor, as well as lines in front of the row of counters selling tickets to the outlying stations. There was a pleasant hum of purposeful, businesslike bustle, a tiny sliver of the daily weekday routine that embraced the working years and lives of millions who had not escaped from what some considered to be the “rat race”, the eternal striving for wealth and security. The scene at Grand Central brought to mind several old films in which the Station was used as a key scenario, such as The Clock with Judy Garland and Robert Walker, The House on Carroll Street and by extension, even the 1953 Italian classic, Vittorio de Sica’s Stazione Termini with Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Cliff. There was even for me a distant filmic whiff of that great British classic, Brief Encounter, most of which is set in a provincial station in England.