There’s this here big old diamond they call the Hope Diamond and it don’t have nothing to do with Bob Hope. Boy was I wrong. It showed up the first time back in 1642, weighing in at over 112 carats, when this French jewel trader fella name of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier done some swapping and ended up with a horse-choker diamond. Some years later, about 1668, the French king, a fella name of Louis XIV, I guess folks used to use roman numerals in their names back in them days, bought it from him. Well I won’t say this Louis XIV guy was a sissy or nothing but he took to wearing jewelry a lot. I don’t s’pose that makes a fella a sissy ‘cause old Grinnin’ Gunther, a fella we know who’s in the used car business, wears these diamond rings on nearly all his fat fingers. Anyway, they didn’t have cameras back in them days so in order to get your picture took, you’d have to sit still for a long time while some other fella painted it. Well, some fella painted this here king with this lunker hanging from his neck and folks said it weighed 67 carats when that happened.
Well, old Louis XIV passed it on to Louis XV, they had took to calling it the French Blue by then, and he passed it on to Louis XVI. I guess they wasn’t too creative with names in them days. Or maybe there weren’t that many folks around so one name would go a long ways. Well I believe that’s where the curse began ‘cause this here Louis XVI’s old lady was a lady name of Marie Antoinette. The common folks of that day were none too happy with this here king prancing around all decked out when they couldn’t get enough to eat, so they came after him and ended up cutting his wife’s head off. Now that’s bad luck!
When the regular folks took over things they put this French Blue, with all the other fancy stuff the king and queen had, in a place they called Garde Meuble so they could keep an eye on it. Security wasn’t too good in them days ‘cause the diamond got stole and took off to nobody knows where for 20 years, from 1792 ‘til 1812, when it turned up again. This fella name of Daniel Eliason had it and by this time it was whittled down to about 45 carats.
It’s a little foggy as to where it was from then ‘til around 1839 but that’s when a fella name of Henry Phillip Hope, not Bob Hope, got hold of it. His name stuck to it and that’s what folks been calling it ever since. This is where the legend of the curse begins, but I think this rock was bad luck from the start. Folks figure the curse starts there ‘cause this Hope fella was rich at the time he bought it but him and his whole family died young and all as poor as a desert longhorn. Whew!
After Hope got rid of the diamond it bounced around from this one to that one, taking its bad luck with it until it ended up with that jeweler name of Cartier and they sold it to Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean who was the one who had it fixed up like it is today, with the 16 white diamonds slapped around it and a chain made up of 45 white diamonds. She was a tough old bird ‘cause her son died before his time but she wasn’t buying in to this curse theory. No sirree, she just hung on to that diamond.
When Mrs. McLean passed, a fella name of Harry Winston bought it in 1949 and after he showed it off all over he figured he’d quit pushing his luck and give it to the Smithsonian Institute which he did in 1958. That’s when Choppy Luggins came up on it.
Choppy Luggins has this strange ability to see things nobody else can see. When we was kids, Choppy told us he could see the words coming out of our mouths or a fart before anybody could smell it. We was never sure about the first part but there was many a time that he would point at the air and say, “Somebody farted,” and sure enough, a couple of seconds later we’d smell it even though none of the rest of us ever seen it. Anyway, old Choppy never was much for museums but the wife and kids kept nagging him to take them to our nation’s capitol, Washington D. C., to look at all the stuff in the Smithsonian. One of the things his wife, Lilac, wanted to see was that there great big diamond. Lilac is a little on the heavy side, tipping the scales at about 290, and figured that diamond was something big enough for a woman her size to wear so it could draw folks’s eyes away from her waist.
When he got to where they were displaying that there diamond, he told us he could see this here thing floating around it. He said he hadn’t ever seen what a curse looked like before but he said this thing was so ugly, it just had to be that curse he’d heard so much about. Choppy reached in his camera bag and yanked out every empty film can he had and went to scooping up that there curse. He said it took about seven of them plastic cans to get it all.
When Choppy got back to Texas he told us he was a little scared of that there curse so he’d trade it to us cheap. Well it wasn’t that cheap but we did manage to trade a ’53 Farmall tractor and a hood for a ’58 Buick for it. And as soon as we made the swap, we put it in this here tube and sealed it up. No sense pushing our luck! We’ll part with this one cheap.
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