Places I've Lived #3 - Plainsboro, New Jersey

We moved from Pennsylvania in 1978 for the lush paradise wasteland that is New Jersey. The next year is pretty much a blur. We were waiting for a house to be built that suffered from shoddy construction and sat unworked upon for months at a time. In the meantime we lived in a rented house owned by an Indian family somewhere in or near Plainsboro. For some reason my brother and I went to two separate school districts. I remember being left alone every day at my second cousin’s house before walking to school and listening to lots of Bee Gees and Donna Summer on the kitchen radio. I wish I could remember what station it was but I was only 8 or 9 and wasn’t keeping track of these things. I was more interested in my cousin’s Star Wars action figures and discovering Pop Rocks while left alone in his room. 

Other random, fleeting memories: A creepy kid from across the street who lived in absolute filth and who didn’t go to school ; watching Super Bowl XIII at the Newark airport on a fuzzy black and white TV ; my brother running away from home ; a one-legged girl who ran (limped?) away from home (an incident which somehow also involved my brother) ; starting a stamp collection ; driving past a water tower in Grovers Mill which people mistook for an alien while listening to War of the Worlds in 1938.
Dad was a maintenance supervisor at a Johnson & Johnson factory and mom worked in the library at nearby Princeton University.  The house never got finished while we lived there and by December 1979 we had fled to rural western New York.

WPRB is a listener-supported station staffed mainly by Princeton University students. They have an eclectic format of Rock, Classical, Blues and Jazz as well as specialty shows including Greek music and children's programming. In 1955 WPRB became the first college FM station to be granted a limited broadcasting license by the FCC.