The Enterprise

Arriving late to my first Farmington city meeting nine years ago, I sat down next to a comfortably dressed, older woman, who was wearing glasses and an eye patch. She appeared to be asleep. Whoever she was, I thought, she must not be too interested in what’s going on.

Much later, I would learn how badly I had underestimated Nancy Leonard. Nobody knew more about what was going on in Farmington than Nancy. In addition to being an ardent “council watcher,” she spent hours listening to the police scanner.

Nancy passed in 2006, and today the house she and her late husband, Leonard, lived in for more than 40 years was open for an estate sale. This was a first for me, shopping among the belongings of someone I once knew. Someone who was also admiring the enormous collection of books commented, “They must have been the best read couple in Farmington!”. The collection included ancient musty volumes of poetry, works by Louisa May Alcott , Cervantes (in the original Spanish), Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson. There were books in French and one, I think, in Latin, Bibles, gardening books, cook books, I could have spent hours browsing through them.

But Brian found the real treasure in the garage behind this mid-19th century house on Shiawassee: a non-descript cardboard box labeled in Nancy’s sprawling hand, “Diggs from the backyard.” Be sure to stop by the History Booth at this year’s Founder’s Festival, July 18-20, and take a look at what we found inside the box. We’ll be camped out on the lawn at City Hall, across from Art on the Grand.