It is perhaps is an indication of how pathetic my life has become, but still. . . in Sunday’s episode of Mad Men, Don Draper is riding to work on the train when he is joined by his paramour, Suzanne Farrell. Don, obviously, is heading south to Manhattan from Ossining, and as he 
moves right to left, the disappearing scenery we see through the window by Don’s right shoulder is full of orange and gold and red autumn leaves. WRONG! The train line that connects Ossining to the Scarborough station at Briarcliff Manor (my station, as it happens) is the Hudson Line. It is called that because it runs along the Hudson River. You don’t get beautiful woodsy scenery out the right side of the train; you don’t even get a beautiful uninterrupted riverscape, because the train tracks run a good part of the way through the gray concrete
edifices of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility (when Jimmy Cagney would tell Pat O’Brien that so-and-so had been sent up the river, the Hudson was the river, and Sing Sing was the up to where he’d been sent) before hitting some marshland. If Don lived in Bedford or Mt. Kisco or Chappaqua, yes, lots of leaves. But Ossining is one of the river towns, and the river is what you’d 
see. Above, top: the platform of the Ossining train station; on the right, the river, separated by a few trees that do not a woods make; on the horizon at center and left, the buildings of Sing Sing. Above left: the Ossining station. Above right: the Big House, or a sign outside of it, anyway. This picture makes Sing Sing seem infinitely more colorful and jaunty than the ugly merciless grounds appear from other vantage points.
