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By Root 502 0

the election of Abraham Lincoln, that infernal Northerner who plotted against the expansion of their chattel-based business. Georgia, the railroad hub of the South, ferried supplies to all corners of the newly hatched Confederacy, until the Union shelled the heart of Atlanta. When the war ended, Atlantans rebuilt their city center, creating a vibrant business district around their new train station. Over the next hundred years the city grew over that district, with bridges and viaducts turning the former street level into subterranea. In 1968 the funeral procession of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. clattered directly overhead; the following year, the “city beneath the city” was reopened as Underground Atlanta, a retail and entertainment destination. Its charming old architecture helped the district to flourish as the Bourbon Street of Atlanta, but eventually subway construction and crime shut down Underground Atlanta. The cookfires of vagrants ravaged the old historical sites. In 1989 a revamped, mall-like Underground Atlanta reopened. Three years later, following the acquittal of the L.A. policemen who had beaten Rodney King, rioters smashed up the place. In 1996, Underground Atlanta opened its doors for a third time, now in time for the Atlanta Olympics. In 2008 two white boys wandered into Underground Atlanta, looking for typos.

We gazed down the little thoroughfare. Having come from the MARTA, Atlanta’s mass transit, I felt that, strangely, we’d reentered the station we’d just left. With the pipes running along the ceiling, this place looked more like the subway than the subway did. A row of clothing stores, interspersed with dollar stores, ran along the wall, and the walkway was broken up with mid-mall kiosks peddling hats, sports jerseys, and your instant photo plastered on mugs or shirts. Light filtered through windows that ran below the ceiling. Perhaps owing to the threatening clouds outside, the lighting in here felt gloomy. Consumers moved along in no hurry, giving the impression that no one came here to find what they needed, but because there wasn’t anywhere to be. Whatever its past glory, Underground Atlanta stood before us as testament to capitalism’s slipperiest slope, junk for people willing to buy junk because it’s there.

A whiteboard affixed to a metal railing contained some spelling issues. I pointed the sign out to Benjamin, who spotted the bright pink PREGNACY TEST immediately, but needed a second to see, in yellow block letters outlined with a black marker, the transposed vowels of SOUVINER (it’s a tricky word, one we’d see botched again before we reached the Pacific). My Typo Correction Kit, a plastic shopping bag holding the tools of my amending trade, bulged heavy in my coat, though I found myself ill-equipped for our entry into this particular den of errata—I lacked dry-erase markers. Still, I felt the fervor of the mission coursing through my veins. It had carried me through sundry trials thus far, including road-acquired ailments: one of my eyes, at present, was welded half shut thanks to an unknown irritant.

The store that the sign advertised lived yet another level down, as if sent to a sub-subterranean time-out corner. Our soles squeaked down the staircase, bringing us into what turned out to be a dingy purveyor of everything from party favors (balloons and streamers) to random household items (clothespins, kitchen utensils, baby bibs). The clientele seemed mostly Latino and black. A woman reached out at us from an ill-defined enclosure at the front, a greeting that made me take a surprised step backward. She wanted our backpacks.

I replied that actually I’d come down to mention that there was an error on one of the store’s dry-erase signs up the stairs.

She stared at me.

I could tell by her sour expression that I’d gotten this typo correction off to a rough start, effectively saying, I don’t trust you to take my bags or my money, much like you can’t be trusted to spell, woman!

“Oh, my cousin did those,” she said. We waited like a couple of dolts for her to continue, then realized that