St. Joseph's Seminary

The campus of the seminary sprawled from east to west over about 200 acres, just north across Lake Carnegie from Princeton, University. A dairy bordered one side, a large nursery backed the property and small sheep farm was just across the road. We could tell if it would rain if we smelled the cow manure coming from the east. Across Canal Road we had a large pine forest, trail, grotto just next to the no longer used Raritan Canal. A footpath separated the canal from Lake Carnegie. The signs of life outside this isolated oasis were few. Cars still speeded by, black fishermen with their rods and buckets would walk along the canal path and once or twice a year a lost driver would stop and ask for directions. Sometimes we watched the daughter of the grounds keeper twirl her baton just outside their home, a hundred yards across the front lawn. It was a modest cause for excitement for her face and figure blurred in that distance. Yet it was still the only trace of a youthful females in this male dominated enclave.

A group of German refugee nuns occupied the original seminary building on the far east of the property. Then the main seminary building, a large gothic stone edifice, had two wings and three floors. The dormitory on the top floor had a seperate t-shaped room on each wing with 32 beds in each wing. Since each bed sat only 3 feet from the next someone devised a modest method to undress in the evening and dress in the morning. Of course it involved a robe and sequence of steps so that no would have impure thoughts triggered by viewing the underpants of another boy. Yet the gymnasim showers were a completely open space where any hiding of any part of one's anatomy. The first time I saw the room full of naked boys, it shocked me.

When the alarm rang to wake us at 6 AM we would walk down three floors to the lockers in the basement, grab a towel and take a shower. Still sleepy we'd walk to the chapel, take our assigned seats, listen to a short prayer or thought of the day. Then we'd sit and meditate, or daydream or nap. Strangely enough we were never really taught how to meditate and the hour itself- 6:30 AM, made true meditation all but impossible.

The main floor of the main building held two classrooms in the main hall and a reference library at one end of the hall. At the other end of the hall was the former refectory. Eventually all classes were moved to the main building. I don't know how some of these rooms were subsumed by other occupation, except to remember that as editor of the YV, The Young Vincentian, I worked in one of those rooms with AB Dick paraphenalia to produce a literaty magazine. At the other end of the hall was storage, I believe. As I am limited by time, I must abbreviate this memoir. So silent good reader, if you want more, you must ask for it.