I have an excuse to wear an inherited piece of jewelry tonight to the black tie which has a pretty amusing backstory. Allow me to introduce you to the tale of the Livesay black diamonds.

A segment of my family was from Kentucky. They were old south “south will rise again” types, with all of the unpleasant baggage that includes. That’s a less pleasant story for another day. Aside from this, they were all characters worthy of Big Fish. Even though they practically lost their wealth eons ago, they still managed to put on airs like they had old money, even when I was a kid. My great aunt was the matriarch of the family and owned a sprawling 1980s southern ranch full of bequeathed silver and antiques, which certainly fooled me as a not-well-off young person. I mean, four bathrooms! The luxury!

They really didn’t have a lot of money, but she wanted to keep her place as Queen of the Town. So the omnipresent family stories got bigger and bolder. Even for me as an adult it’s been incredibly hard to sort out what parts of my family history are even true. Every military story was dauntless. Every family home had a ghost story. Every in law had a tragic backstory worthy of telenovelas. Not for my benefit, but for the mere mortals at the Piggly Wiggly…

As happens, auntie passed away, and the family had to close out her estate. There was a ton of stuff to sift through, and identifying what was of real value was an adventure in itself. Between antiques that grew value in age and fakes that had none, it took weeks of painstaking work. The townies were deeply invested. She was obviously glamorous and Fabulously Wealthy(tm) of course. Except she wasn’t. She was a normal middle class person who had a lot of inherited stuff, local clout, and stories. Quite a lot of the stuff didn’t have a huge monetary value at all, and my parents spent weeks getting it in order and dealing with family fighting over it.

But the prized, prized item? It was her jewelry. She fancied herself a southern socialite, and had the wardrobe to match. The gem of her collection were her black diamonds, which she had convinced an entire not insignificant town in Kentucky were absolutely real and worth a fortune. My parents thereafter contended with the neighbors and folks at shops eagerly asking to find her hidden collection. It was in the walls, certainly! A hidden safe! They would bring the sledgehammers! Tomorrow!

Not too surprisingly, and quite disappointing to me, they were not hidden in a secret underground safe. The jewelry boxes were eventually found, and among them the glittering, glimmering vintage black diamonds. My parents couldn’t make heads or tails of it and didn’t want to deal with the town folk one minute longer, so they took them back to Chicago to be appraised.

The jeweler took them back into his workroom, bemused at the story. After a bit of examination, he came back to declare with certainly that they were absolutely, without a doubt, a very old and quite excellent total fake. And that’s how I inherited the infamous “black diamonds” for which a town enthusiastically wanted to bash in house walls. Sorry, not sorry.