‘A St. John’s Day salvaged’

    

And that’s the First Presbyterian Church of Cranbury in the background too.
James Anderson was a Presbyterian minister.

I’d had big plans for today—a Saturday St. John Baptist Day in the tercentennial year of Anderson’s Constitutions—involving a feast for about thirty guests, with talks from the lectern about that first book of Masonic jurisprudence, and inside a historic setting too. But I couldn’t get all the planning finished, so I canceled the whole thing and anticipated sulking all day.

But then Don, our Senior Warden at New Jersey Lodge of Masonic Research and Education 1786, suggested an informal approach, and that worked out great! There were only seven of us (David from Georgia—the country—drove all the way from Ohio!), but you wouldn’t know it from the quality and duration of the conversation. We were in the Cranbury Inn in central Jersey.

We were there for four hours!

Turns out, to my great chagrin, it’s about two miles from Hightstown-Apollo Lodge. Had I realized that a month earlier, I could have saved the big party plans, but this was pretty terrific. New Jersey’s top Masonic scholars (I don’t include myself there) and several others who like to listen (I do count myself there) enjoyed hours of conversation about Anderson, Preston, Webb, Cross, Sadler, rituals, research techniques, grand masters, and a lot more.

We had to ourselves the original part of the restaurant, where travelers and diners sat in the 1750s. Perfect. The poor kid waiting on us had to come and go through the room overhearing weird talk of Masons, monks, rituals, saints, Landmarks, Catholics, Protestants, et al. I’m a good tipper generally but, for his suffering, I gave him a Masonic 33 percent.

Kudos to Cranbury Inn. Our meals were pretty simple (burgers, pasta), but everyone ate with gusto. I’d return for certain.

That’s my kind of décor!

What’s the next excuse for a Masonic feast?