THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 28, 1996 TAG: 9604280046
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Elizabeth Simpson
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
The rich throw better yard sales.
Last week's auction at Sotheby's confirms F. Scott Fitzgerald's observation: The very rich are different from you and me.
One thought ran through my mind while watching Jackie Kennedy Onassis' belongings cross the auction block:
This is the stuff her kids didn't want?
By the time we get to this level in my family, we're talking fondue pots and stamp collections.
OK, so I can see why Caroline might have turned down that 40-karat diamond ring - who's got a finger strong enough to hold it up? - but some of the other castoffs would have caused a catfight between my sister and me.
We've argued over who will inherit tin cookie cutters, after all.
But that's not the only difference between the Kennedy family and mine.
Jackie's cache could best be described with these adjectives: Tasteful. Elegant. Understated.
Those words don't come to mind when thinking about the things my father has passed down to my sister and me.
Instead of Jackie's jade, rubies, diamonds and kunzite - what is kunzite anyway? - our family jewels run along the lines of plastic, rhinestones and faux pearls. Rather than ``hammered gold,'' we have dented metal; instead of pear-shaped diamonds, we get banana-yellow clip-ons.
Rather than contacting Sotheby's, my father is dispersing his sprawling estate through the U.S. Mail. The jewels arrive in Ziploc bags. Instead of a slick catalog, I get handwritten tags: ``Aunt Lillian got this at the state fair.''
Jackie's possessions had a theme of old money running through them. An air of quiet sophistication. A cultured mystique. A refined gentility.
The theme of my father's heirlooms seems to be water fowl. I once got a painting of a duck from him. Then, a wooden decoy with a frayed straw tail. And then, not long after that, a ceramic vase of three ducks with interlocking wings, sitting in a pond of reeds.
My husband made me throw the vase away. I was starting to like it.
Jackie carefully preserved her nursery items, like Caroline's rocking horse and John-John's red velvet-upholstered high chair. I got a faded corduroy lion with split seams and no tail. A battered copy of ``Nobody Listens to Andrew.'' And a Mary Poppins doll with a lopsided hat, and, alas, no umbrella.
All of which, by the way, I kept.
No doubt, Jackie had a flair for the unusual, like the small, traveling casket of Marie Antoinette's that she picked up at an auction in 1981.
My father had a knack for finding weird things at auctions too. With a little different twist. The clarinet, for instance, that was so warped the keys didn't cover the holes anymore. The cardboard box filled to the brim with white buttons, all exactly the same style and size. ``You can never have too many white buttons,'' he said. Yes, you can. And the shoebox full of eyeglasses.
Never mind that they weren't his prescription. He tried one pair after another until he found a set that matched his eyes. It was cheaper, after all, than buying a new pair.
But beyond all of that, there's just something about Jackie - something about the Kennedys - that's different from my family. Some je ne sais quoi quality.
Say, what the heck does je ne sais quoi mean anyway?
If only I had $42,550 for that French grammar book of Jackie's. by CNB