Since a small stretch of iron fencing at Hawthorne train has room for all of five bicycles, I called Mount Pleasant’s town hall about getting a bike rack put in. (This, after my frustrating efforts to find out where one could legally park a bicycle when that small space filled up.) Municipalities would typically be in favor of this stuff, one would think. More bikers, less congestion in the parking lot (Hawthorne had to build a supplemental lot some years ago to make room for all the cars), and that general Al Gore/fossil fuels/environment thing.

The woman at Town Hall assured me that Metro-North, not the Town of Mount Pleasant (of which the hamlet of Hawthorne is part) owned the station and the parking lot. I asked her if she was sure, as I didn’t want to call Metro-North, only to have them tell me it’s owned by Mount Pleasant. “They own it,” she told me. “I’m positive.”

So I lob a call into Metro-North. A cheery and helpful spokesperson made three calls with me on the other line before he found someone who knew something. They chatted a bit about their dogs, the spokesperson lamenting that his “great big fat one, so fat he couldn’t lick his own yum-yum section,” had, in fact, died.

Finally, he came back with some information.

“Mount Pleasant is the owner and operator of the Hawthorne station and the parking lot,” the spokesperson told me. “We absolutely do not own or control it.”

Uh, OK.

He said he’d triple check.