They say that interesting people have interests. This has played out in my life by passing acquaintance with two people I admired because of their immersion in their own interests. The first was a writer and artist named Edith LaFrancis. I had been working on the history of Longmeadow, Mass. which was to be published for the town’s bicentennial in 1982. Edith had written the history of Agawam, Mass. and I was drawn to her to share our local-history writing experience.
I found her living in Agawam in a house her father had built around 1900. Inside, it had the clutter of someone whose interests run deeper than mere tidiness. There was an enviable collection of local history and genealogy books as well as paintings she’d done herself; magazines and articles. She was modestly remunerated for some of her published articles, but it was clear her activities were motivated by sheer love of the work.
I was surprised to find that Edith knew who my great, great, great grandmother Persis Kent was. Edith was a descendant of Persis’s second husband by his first wife; and, while this did not make us relatives, our relatives shared family gatherings, and Edith knew some of them. She remembered that my Springfield family would take the trolley across the Connecticut River to visit relatives living on the other side. From among her family mementoes she pulled a picture of my grandfather taken in about 1888.
My other interesting person is a man whose name I have forgotten. His interest was in music and musical instuments, and he worked at home in Orange, Massachusetts, a place I found by crossing the beautiful French King Bridge on Route 2. His house was tucked into a little side street and like Edith’s, it was cluttered with a hodgepodge of materials supporting his work.
He took me into a small workroom and cleared off a rocking chair for me to sit on. I rocked contentedly, as he worked on my daughter’s flute and talked to me about the history of flute-making in Massachusetts. Besides that lovely hour or so in the rocking chair, I never had any other contact with the man, but he is unforgettable to me. Years later I met some people from Orange at a Libertarian event in New Hampshire (Porcfest) and was not in the least surprised that they knew and liked him.