Exploring Hightstown

I’ve spent three years living almost year-round in Hightstown. NJ, and yet, through this trip, I became conscious of the fact that I had never really seen the town. On that warm Friday afternoon, Warren and I walked out of the Peddie gates ready to begin our journey. When we first walked down Main Street, I was familiar with my most of my surroundings, however I was excited and ready to explore places I had not yet seen. We walked farther down main street, passing shops I had never seemed to notice before, although I had walked that same route many times. I realized that although I had been down this street before, I had never taken the opportunity, or the time, to look at what was right in front of me. Nevertheless, we continued down the road.

Our first goal was to get to the yellow house on bank street we had heard so much about. I had heard from more than one person about this ‘haunted house.’ I pictured it as a broken down house with a long, winding, gravel driveway. It would have broken glass windows and it would be dark and cloudy all around it at all times of the day. I was anxiously waiting to see the house and to find out how close my imagination came to what it truly looked like. As we walked past the lake, nearing the Hightstown Fire Station, Warren pointed out the huge wall that read “Historical Hightstown” with a few dates written on it. Neither of us had really noticed the size and greatness of the wall, or at least the grandeur of the writing, so I hoped it was fairly new. We found Bank Street and started walking towards the house. However, there was something even more interesting on that street. On the left side, all down the road, was an abandoned warehouse. We tried to peer in to see if it was still being used, or to see if we could tell what it was ever used for, but we couldn’t see too much because most of the windows were patched with wood. I assumed it wasn’t being used, that it was just an old building they had never gotten around to taking down.

We finally reached the house I had heard so much about. It wasn’t exactly how I had pictured it, but my imagination had gone a bit wild. The house was broken down, and the right side of the house seemed like it was about to fall off. Bushes and trees overflowed into the yard as if they were shielding the house. The windows were covered with plastic sheeting and there was an iron fence surrounding the property. The one thing that really surprised me was the cat sitting in the corner of the yard. It may not have actually belong to the people in the house, but the presence of life in such a broken down place amazed me. It was so empty, void of activity and so isolated, yet there was this one small animal to give it hope. Once we left the house we walked down another road and discovered the backside of the warehouse we had passed before. However, this side had cars parked in the lot and people inside the building. Warren made me aware of the fact that this was the same broken down, secluded building, yet from this other angle, it was a completely normal building.

We continued on our journey through Hightstown, traveling towards the turnpike to explore the neighborhoods on that side of the town. While not extremely unique, many of the houses were had interesting qualities to them. Most of the ones we passed were painted in various colors, but a few stood out to me. On one side of the town, there were two houses right next to each other, both with small figures and statues surrounding the house and throughout the yard. However, my favorite house had a tree right in front of it. However, the tree was cut down so only about five feet of the trunk remained. The trunk was carved into the shape of a castle with a snake winding through it. While I have no idea why the owners chose to carve that in front of their house, I found the detail and care put into making it amazing.

Once we had seen many of the houses in Hightstown, we went to a small store off of Main Street. In the midst of talking with the women who was working there at the time, the yellow, haunted house on Bank Street came up. She told us that she knew of the house, and she also referred to it as the ‘haunted house,’ and told us what she knew about it. I was somewhat surprised that she knew of the house and considered it haunted like many others. It amazed me that so many knew of this house, yet I had never heard of it before this past week, and it made me realize that I really did not know as much about Hightstown as I thought I did. Warren and I said goodbye to the woman in the store, and decided to take a few minutes to write down our experiences in our travel notebook. Once we returned to the Peddie campus. This journey we had just completed really showed me the value in taking a closer look at places you may feel you know. I now knew that Hightstown was more than just Mannino’s and Slowdown, and that there are many amazing things about Hightstown, that were right in front of me the whole time, and I may never have seen them if I did not take the opportunity to look.