The lost-and-found office at Central Station
Eleven umbrellas a day, one tuba a year, and a clerk who has kept every odd glove since 2004.
The lost-and-found office at Central Station is a room behind track 6, with a hatch, a bell and a sign that says the hatch is open from ten until four. It is open from ten until four. Inside, Frances Abara has worked the hatch for twenty-two years.
What gets left
Umbrellas, mostly: about eleven a day, more in October. Then phones, keys, scarves and a steady stream of single gloves, which Frances keeps in a drawer of their own in case the other one turns up. Sometimes it does.
Once a year, give or take, someone leaves a musical instrument. There has been a cello, two violins and a tuba, which was collected by a brass band from the valley three weeks after a wedding.
What happens to it
Most things are kept for three months. What nobody claims goes to a thrift store on Mill Lane, except the gloves. Frances says the gloves are a long game.
She has one rule for the people at the hatch: describe it before you see it. Most people can. The ones who cannot, she says, are usually right anyway; they just do not know what color their own umbrella is.
