Old Skool Orlando: The Princeton Diner

Far away from the high rises of International Drive and the sprawing apartment complexes there is an older Orlando, a quiet settled Orlando whose shaded streets belie that this area once gardered the imagination of the plenty looking for a new life. Take Edgewater Drive off of Hwy 50 and meander for a way along the lake you come to a nicely settled community known as College Park. Small shops line the streets suggesting the work of the "nu community" planners. No College Park is the model not the result of this long overdue tinkering with the landscape. In a world judged by it monumental scale, this is a smaller more human scale, a sort of house on Walden pond scale. In fact near by is the house Jack Kerouac and his mother occupied in 1958 as his own monument, "On the Road" began appearing in book stores. Continue on down Edgewater until the GPS tells you that you have arrived, but your eyes will have to look for the hidden destination, Princeton Diner, tucked away in a strip mall between the high school football field and a trailer park. It sits perched on the corner like a rare bird back from the bend in the road. The original owners were from Princeton New Jersey and opened it in the 40s the waitress tells me as I order the special; two eggs, link sausage , toast and home fries. The people that own it now have had it for 22 years. The interior is 1950 or 1960, and the patrons are older retirees, talking city politics, though one balding fellow has on a white doctor's smock with "medical" embroideried on the front. An American flag hangs above it all near a high shelf containing "antique" advertising items and "ordinaries" from a time now quaintly vanishing. According to the waitress, the Princeton along with the trailer park next door will soon disappear as the nearby high school expands their parking lot. I must say with regret that the breakfast was perfect like childhood memories of my childhood. I'm so glad I got the chance to experience it before "progress" and "necessity" fold it up and pack it away.