Hank Kalet

Glenn Johnson, of Cranbury, passed this article from the Financial Times of London along to me a couple of weeks ago and I forgot to post it. It was written by Jan Morris, who says she had lived in Cranbury about 50 years ago.

I’m not sure how Cranbury residents should feel, being referred to as “plump and prosperous,” but it does say a lot about how the rest of the world views the United States.

Consider this passage about a visit to the First Presbyterian Church on South Main Street:

The church was packed. The worshippers were just as I remembered them, plump and prosperous. The sermon was sensibly short, properly passionate, punctuated by gentle witticisms and greeted by the congregation with rapt attention.

What a relief. I had feared some universal decline into fundamentalism. When the church members dispersed to enjoy Sunday brunch at the Cranbury Inn over the road, or at Teddy’s Luncheonette (49 Main Street), I engaged people at random in conversation, and it seemed to me that their sense of identity was, if anything, more assured than it had been 50 years ago. Nobody mentioned the primaries and nobody died from gunfire.

Wow. No fundamentalists and no gunfire. But, then again, when you view the world through a concocted “American scenario” of social anarchy, or something very close to it, that is an exaggerated caricature (the redundancy is intended) you’re likely to be surprised by the reality of things and end up painting a picture that is, at best, a distortion:

I came to think during the next few days that Cranbury, New Jersey, was reacting to national self-doubts by remaining itself, but more so. No longer the simple settlement of my youth, it had not exactly been gentrified, more heritaged. Conservation is big now, and almost every house on Main Street has its plaque of origin – “Built by the Reverend Snowden, 1794”, or “Site of Nelson Petty’s Harness Shop, 1893-1945”.

So the town’s continuity is consciously maintained. It is true that Main Street has lost some of its old agricultural resonance, and the Cranbury Inn is not quite the country pub it used to be. Design and decor shops are prominent. Here and there an Aeolian harp tinkles. I enjoyed excellent cappuccinos at Cranbury Delights, 64 North Main Street, and very good pizzas at number 63. Behind the old firehouse – now a museum – is a lavish new one, with no kitchen chairs outside, and there is a handsome new school.

But to most appearances, Cranbury is remarkably unchanged. What is different 50 years on is it feels determined not to be swamped by the corrosion of the great world, not to talk about Hillary, Barack or even John McCain, not to let itself be disoriented by the “scenario”. By and large, crass development has been held at bay – held to the east, that is, beyond Highway 130. Out there is a wilderness of loveless housing, industrial plants and corporational headquarters, but behind that invisible village rampart, serenity is sustained.

I have to wonder what the residents of Cranbury Station might think — or South Brunswick, Monroe, Plainsboro and West Windsor — all truly nice places to live.

Yes, Cranbury is a somewhat unusual place in central New Jersey, well-planned and more affluent than some of the other communities in the region, but it is not an island and doesn’t operate as if it is. Local loyalty and civic pride are important characteristics of Cranbury, which bring with them a sense of ownership and entitlement that I have experienced first hand (when we consolidated the two editions of the Press into one, for instance) that has helped Cranbury maintain a sense of identity at a time when strip malls and subdivisions have altered the character of neighboring communities.

That said, most of the region is not beset by Morris’ “American scenario”; in fact, most of central New Jersey — southern Middlesex County and easter Mercer County — are rather safe, well-off communities with good schools and well-kept lawns. The region, to some degree, defines the stereotype of suburbia, though as with all stereotypes the truth is more complicated than any simple narrative could explain.

Cranbury, like most of the rest of the state, must deal with budget matters and taxes, traffic and petty crime. But Cranbury is different, mostly because it has a defined village area that has been preserved over the years, one that creates a sense of civic connectedness. There are other factors, of course, ones of race and class that are rarely discussed but that helped shape the town’s history, that have helped it maintain a unified sense of itself as the state at a time when the state was diversifying.

And unity is Cranbury’s strength.