Back to: The Mystery Spot Rambling Ned and the Hope Diamond
Me: I'd love to listen to one of your stories, Ned. But I have to get home by eight because there's something on tv I want to watch.
Ned: What are you talking about? It's only a quarter after seven. I've got the perfect story to fill the time. Back in 1921, I attended a New York Yankees game.
Bob: Huh? You weren't even alive back then. In fact, I think Grandma and Grandpa were still dating back then.
Ned: Shut up! Err...I mean, perhaps you're right. Maybe I could tell a story about you instead...
Bob: No! You can't tell how I... I mean, go ahead and tell your story.
Ned: Everyone knows that back then, the Yankees were in Philadelpia. And everyone knows they used to be the East Bay Wranglers. So there I was at the Wranglers game, eating box after box of "Cracker Jacks." Now of course the guy who invented them was not called Jack. His name was John. Anyway, I was chewing on a handful of the carmel coated foodstuff when all of a sudden I bit down on something hard. Very, Very hard. This was the Hope Diamond.
That reminded me of one episode of "Green Acres." The old geezer kept pulling out five cent baseball cards while everyone else pulled out diamond necklaces worth thousands of dollars. There was also an episode where chickens laid square eggs and the toast in toasters only popped out when you shouted a certain number, but that is not related to my story. I think the only thing that kept me from spitting out a mouthful of teeth with the diamond is the fact that your teeth are supposed to be athe hardest material in your body. Now personally I don't know if that is necessarily true, because one time Bob... Well, I can't tell that story right now because Bob is looking at me funny. (I'll tell you it later...) It reminds me of how everyone looked at me when I found the Hope Diamond. You do know how it got its name, don't you? The name comes from the phrase "I HOPE this is worth a lot of money!"
Well, anyway, I was rich. Very very rich. But that's when all the trouble began. Walking home, I nearly got hit by five buses at one crosswalk. And I'm talking about those huge, double-decker buses you find in England and a few other tourist towns. All kinds of charities wanted money from me, saying that I wasn't truly "rich" until I helped other people by giving them money. That made me mad because I had just made a contribution three months earlier, and I am not talking about $1.35 and a Tic-Tac here. These people make you feel evil unless you give all your money to people in developing nations and even if you do, they rub it in so you'll give them money for the rest of your life...
Worse still, my brothers Ed, Bob, and Ted were born over the next five years so I was no longer an only child. No, wait... Ed is older than me, so he was born before me. At least I think so. I'm not absolutely sure about that, but I'm sure I think that he was because of what happened next. You see, Ed was babysitting little Larry Nerberger. He found the Hope Diamond, little Larry that is, and little Larry was curious about what would happen if he flushed it down the toilet. Well, what happened was that it got stuck and clogged up the plumbing for the entire neighborhood. It took the plumber 272 days to fish it out.
The bill was so high that we couldn't possibly pay it, but he agreed to take the Hope Diamond instead. This plumber, Smith Johnson, had collected so much stuff in this manner that when he died, his only son, Ian, opened a museum that had all of his father's stuff in it. And that's how we got the Smithsonian.
Me: Oh my goodness! It's 7:59!
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