New Hope

2 Comments April 30, 2025 Steve A. Wiggins

One of my favorite places along the Delaware River is the town of New Hope. Across the river is the very nice town of Lambertville, New Jersey, but New Hope has a feel to it. When I learned that a new horror museum had opened there—Nightmare in New Hope—we scrambled to change plans to get there right away. We went the Saturday before Easter. We’d planned to spend some time touring the rest of the town as well since it’d been years since we’d done so. We managed to find parking and, since the museum opens at one, grabbed some lunch and went to Farley’s Bookshop. Independent Bookstore Day was actually the following weekend, but bookstores need no special occasion. Farley’s has changed a lot since our last visit. It’s smaller (as has happened with many indies) and brighter. I found plenty to like there, but I did miss the darker, dustier feel to the first incarnation of the store I’d known.

We made our way to Nightmare in New Hope. And waited. And waited. Several people passed by, noting that they’d have gone in if it were open. One of our party messaged the website since telephoning did nothing. Eventually the owner indicated that he was closed for Easter. Of all things. A horror museum, open only on weekends, closed for the first nice weather we’d had on a weekend? That was the main reason we’d driven an hour to get there. We found a place with vegan ice cream and fed the ducks on the river. I was sad that the main objective of the trip, the museum, hadn’t turned out. And I knew it would be quite some time before we could try again.

My daughter, knowing my tendency to get depressed over such things, suggested we could go to Peddler’s Village instead. My wife and daughter had visited it before, and so we decided to round out our Saturday trip there. Peddler’s Village is a set of speciality shops that was born about the same time that I was. These days there are about 60 shops with items that may or may not be strictly necessary. Although we’d been to Farley’s, I couldn’t pass up the Lahaska Bookshop, part of the Village. It was warm that day and we saw maybe only five or six shops. At least one of them was an independent bookstore. Not exactly the day we’d planned, but a day spent in and around New Hope is never wasted. But really, closed for Easter without even putting a notice on the website?

(See updates here and here.)

Leave a comment April 18, 2010 Steve A. Wiggins

To celebrate my wife’s birthday, yesterday we drove to the historic Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania to see a show. The Playhouse has an illustrious history, having hosted performances including such players as Kitty Carlisle, Lillian Gish, Bert Lahr, and Robert Redford. We went to see a production of Guys and Dolls, the musical based on characters and situations penned by Damon Runyon. (My first introduction to Runyon, I must admit, was in the Alice Cooper anthem, Department of Youth.) Although we attended a performance of the musical back in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a couple of decades ago, I’d forgotten how much the Bible moves the plot along.

Naturally, any love story that involves a Salvation Army cadet will have its religious conflicts, but it is Sky Masterson’s knowledge of the Bible that drives Sarah Brown to first give him serious attention. Without the arresting power of the Holy Bible, the love interest would never have sparked. As I frequently tell my students, without some knowledge of the Bible, American society just can’t be understood. Even Sky Masterson’s real name is Obadiah (“servant of Yahweh”).

Damon Runyon was anything but a saint. His lifestyle was diametrically apposed to that envisioned by his fictionally pure Sarah Brown – a heavy drinker, smoker, and perhaps womanizer, he was a friend of crime bosses and a noted gambler. But Runyon, like most Jazz Age Americans, knew his Bible. One of his famous phrases derives from the book of Ecclesiastes: “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s how the smart money bets.” From the quiet streets of an artsy hamlet in Pennsylvania to the glitzy lights of Broadway, the Bible still makes itself known. The smart money is on the one who learns to spot it.