So there’s going to be a $22 million addition to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library to house Sen. Ted Kennedy’s papers and assorted items. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
This is self-storage, Kennedy style.
My guess is that the senator - or, more likely, his wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy - wants all the junk he’s accumulated through the years out of the house. OK, houses. Because, you know men, they let stuff pile up. Ticket stubs to a baseball game they attended four years ago. Crumpled receipts from CVS ‘‘filed” on the antique table by the entryway. A ratty T-shirt from college.
People like you and me, when we’re overrun with life’s detritus, we hit eBay or California Closets. We hold tag sales. But when you’re a Kennedy, there’s no need to make up little signs reading ‘‘25 cents” or ‘‘Free to good home.” You don’t have to waste an afternoon fighting off people trying to bargain you down to 15 cents for an old flashlight. Uh-uh. If you’re lucky enough to be Sen. Kennedy (or even one of the lesser Kennedys, or a member of JFK’s administration), no I-93 Fortress self-storage for you. Your collection resides in a place with a gorgeous waterfront view and federal funding.
So, what treasures from Sen. Kennedy’s collection will the public be treated to? Notes from important legislation? Private family photos? A poem from the late Jackie Onassis?
Uh, let’s just say that when visiting the expanded library, it probably will be best to keep your expectations low. Most of the new 30,000-square-foot wing will be, ah, storage space (temperature- and climate-controlled), and not generally open to the masses. Although my guess is that Kennedy will have a key, in case he needs to retrieve something he put in there by mistake, such as keys he might have left in a jacket pocket, or a slip of paper with a phone number he doesn’t have anywhere else.
It’s nice to be American royalty, isn’t it? This latest perk got me thinking: Why not me, or you? Why can’t we donate our papers? I called the Kennedy Library to see if perhaps it’d be interested in anything of mine (I have piles of old magazines. Surely, Vogues from the 1980s have great historical relevance). But the generally genial Tom McNaught, deputy director of the Kennedy Library Foundation, was fairly blunt. Tactless, actually.
After extolling the virtues of the senator’s items - ‘‘any institution would be killing to get this collection” - he turned his attention to my generous bequest: ‘‘We’ll take a pass,” he said.