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Feature: January 22, 1997
If It's Breakfast, We Must Be in
PRINCETON
A Year-Long Odyssey Takes a Couple to Every Tigertown in America
By Lolly O'Brien
Ken Perry '50 and his wife, Garie, consumed a lot of sausage biscuits in 1996 as part of their year-long effort to eat breakfast in every Princeton in the United States.
What began as a lark for the retired couple from Glendale, Missouri, outside St. Louis, turned into an obsession. The couple, who have been married for 40 years and who finish each other's sentences, were driving in Iowa when they conceived the project. Why breakfast? Garie laughs, "We love breakfast. We love sausage." Ken says, "We love Princeton."
They began by checking an article in a 1967 PAW. Written by James Neville '25, it provided a brief history of each of 27 Princetons around the country. The Perrys did more legwork using a Triple-A guide and a Rand McNally atlas. They found a total of 32 Princetons-some towns, some villages, and some nothing more than crossroads.
The couple's aim, says Ken, was to visit all the Princetons in one year and to complete the adventure at "the best old place of all," topping their visit with a breakfast at Lowrie House. On December 4, they did just that, over plates of crêpes aux fraises et framboises (but sans sausage) regaling President Shapiro with an account of their travels.
The Perrys did more than just visit each Princeton and eat the local version of Egg McMuffin, then blow out of town. They poked around-talking to locals, ferreting out local-history buffs, and sometimes tracking down a town's oldest resident. The Perrys' method gave them enough historical detail to write a book, albeit one of perhaps limited readership beyond the university's 70,000 alumni.
They began by writing to the postmasters of the 19 Princetons with ZIP codes, asking for information about the town and a list of motels and restaurants. Fewer than half responded. Undeterred, about once a month the Perrys ventured out, once dovetailing an excursion with a class mini-reunion. On a typical visit they would arrive in a Princeton in the afternoon, visit the post office, and arrange to have a postcard hand-canceled. They would then scout out the town for their next day's breakfast, usually at a café. In the Princetons that were too small for a restaurant, they would have coffee and a sausage biscuit or doughnut while standing by the hood of their car.
In every Princeton, the Perrys took pictures and made friends and news. In Princeton, South Carolina, a local farmer, whom the Perrys had phoned after getting his name from a person who knew a person who knew him, invited them to spend the night at his place. In Princeton, Idaho, the postmaster and her daughter invited the Perrys back to the tiny post office, where they served up eggs and coffee from appliances brought in for the occasion. In Princeton, Louisiana, a taxidermist showed off the 37-foot-long, handmade canoe he uses for taking tourists on gourmet float trips on the local bayou. At least 11 newspapers ran stories on the Perrys' quest. In Princeton, Michigan, a writer was so taken by their story that he produced an eight-page press release and mailed it to newspapers across the country.
In each Princeton, the Perrys tried to visit (if they existed) the library, cemetery, high school, chamber of commerce, county courthouse, and newspaper. They recorded information on the high school's mascot and colors-nine Princeton high schools have tigers as mascots, but only one of these, in Minnesota, drapes itself in orange and black. (Three schools have bulldogs as mascots, two have panthers, and two have eagles. Other mascots include a cougar, a mustang, a redbug, a bee, and a dragon.) At the county library in Athens, Georgia, an archivist dug from her files the original letter from James Neville asking for information for his 1967 PAW article. The Perrys found in this part of Georgia the ruins of an old mill called Princeton. The mill's first president had been William Williams, Class of 1806.
Often at local libraries, the Perrys learned of a town's founder and the provenance of its name. Princeton, West Virginia, was named for the Battle of Princeton; the town is located in Mercer County, named after General Hugh Mercer, a Virginian who was killed in the battle. Princeton, Missouri, is also located in a Mercer County (as, of course, is the one in New Jersey). Princeton, Florida, was founded by Gaston "Duck" Drake, Class of 1894, who started a lumber company in Dade County and painted all its buildings orange and black.
Princeton, Maryland, which exists on the Rand McNally map, turned out to have been platted as Princeton in 1940, but it was never developed under that name. Instead, it's part of a subdivision called Andrews Manor, a home for many employees at Andrews Air Force Base; the local grade school is known as Princeton Elementary. The Perrys visited the school, met the principal, and gave a talk to the students.
The most difficult Princeton to find was the second of two in Georgia. When the Perrys visited the location 20 miles east of Atlanta, they found no physical traces of a town. But in the Rockdale County Library they learned that a Princeton had existed there many years before.
Ken, who majored in chemical engineering, worked for most of his career at Monsanto, in Springfield, Massachusetts, and St. Louis. In 1985, he says, he received a "golden handshake," and the following year he and Garie began spending part of each year teaching English in China.
The Perrys have no plans to repeat their Princeton pilgrimage, which covered 24,093 miles and cost $8,000, but they are still considering writing a book about their sausage-and-biscuit ramblings, tentatively titled A Year in Princeton.
Lolly O'Brien is PAW's Class Notes editor.
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