On our way to a wedding in Connecticut this past weekend we stopped in Princeton. The center of town looked little changed from the '70s, when I worked down the road at The Trenton Times. The bright Tudor building still lorded over the intersection of Witherspoon and Nassau streets, and serious-looking young people walked purposefully down the sidewalks.
There were more gourmet stores than I remember, including one selling Lindt chocolates. But Lahiere's, the elegant French restaurant on Witherspoon Street, for years the place for romantic and celebratory meals (especially when the parents paid), was gone (though the name had not yet been erased). I accosted a woman coming out of a nearby clothing store, and she said it had closed about 6 months ago. "It was all of a sudden," she explained. "We couldn't even make final reservations. It's a terrible loss. It's left a huge hole in the community."
I continued down Witherspoon, walked across the new plaza (new to me at least) in front of the public library. Just inside the library doors was a used book store, and on top of a shelf in front of the window four coffee table books were prominently displayed. One of them was New Jersey: Unexpected Pleasures, which I co-authored in 1980.
