Beautiful Amtrak Story on Joe Biden

[TheCoxwain]

Source: Washinton Post

"Some mornings he would ride down on the train and literally buy the entire car and conductors coffee," says Claire DeMatteis, who worked for Biden for 10 years and sometimes rode the train with him. He'd get up and say, " 'Anybody want coffee?' And anybody who wanted got coffee."

He talks to passengers. He talks to the folks who take his tickets. He talks policy and family and everything in between. If he's waiting for a train, he talks to the folks at the ticket counter and to the shoeshine guy and the redcap guy and to Johnson, the newsstand cashier -- which is why, when Johnson found out Joe was joining Obama's ticket, she called her mother to brag about "my friend."

He throws parties for retiring conductors, and once had a crewman serenaded by bagpipes. For Biden's first day back at work following two operations for brain aneurysms in 1988, he took the train, naturally. "The engineer saluted him with a longer-than-usual toot of the train's whistle," UPI reported at the time.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/08/26/ST2008082603569.html

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I got a lump in my throat reading this story