Really That Good: A CHRISTMAS STORY
So heres a Christmas story, one in which a young sailor suffers a great disappointment, but after getting a Major Award is encouraged to embark on a new life, one that gives him a way to live Christmas pretty much every day of the year, with the added benefit of having a very good reason to occasionally put on a life-sized pink bunny suit and carry a giant leg lamp the deluxe model with him.
You see, Brian Jones, who now lives in Jacksonville, owns the house in Cleveland where they filmed A Christmas Story, the charmingly ramshackle, nostalgic 1983 movie thats become a Christmas classic . He bought the place on Ebay, for $150,000. Sight unseen.
When he emailed his wife, Beverly, to tell her what hed done, her reply once she figured out he was serious was just one line long.
I dont know whether to laugh or cry.
That was 11 years ago.
The ending to this Christmas story is still being written, all this time later. But signs point to it being a happy one. So go ahead: Laugh away.
YOULL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT
Wayne Jones was a Navy pilot, and thats all his son Brian ever wanted to be as well. So he worked to valedictorian of his high school in Southern California, went to the Naval Academy, majored in aerospace engineering, went to flight school in Pensacola. Where he flunked the eye exam.
He would not fly.
He was crushed, but had little time to feel sorry for himself. He was off to Naval Intelligence school in Virginia.
Back in California, his parents came up with a plan to make him feel better. A plan so crazy it just might work.
They built a leg lamp, using a female mannequin leg, a high heel shoe and a lamp shade they found. They put it in a wooden box, marked it FRAGILE, and sent it to their son. Odd, perhaps, unless you knew how much the Jones family liked A Christmas Story, in which the movies Old Man (Darren McGavin) receives a leg lamp in a box just like that, which he talks himself into believing is a Major Award thats to be highly prized.
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The Jones family had longed loved A Christmas Story, which followed young Ralphie Parker as he dreamed of getting a Red Ryder air rifle for Christmas, despite the adults telling him, Youll shoot your eye out. It suited their sense of humor (irreverent) and was much quoted and much watched.
So upon receiving his homemade leg lamp, Jones did indeed feel better. And he realized something else: People kept telling him how much they liked the leg lamp, being fans of the movie themselves, and how they would actually like to have a leg lamp too.
Hmm, thought Jones. So as his six years in the Navy came to an end, he announced he was going to make leg lamps.
Everybody thought I was a lunatic. What, youre leaving a good-paying job in the Navy to go sell leg lamps?
The first year, he made 500 by himself, out his out of his condo in San Diego. He sold them all. The next year he had 1800 made in China and sold them all too.
He still loved the movie. So in December 2004, he bought the old house where A Christmas Storys exterior shots were filmed (most interior house scenes took place on a soundstage in Toronto). Two days after Christmas in 2004, he flew to Cleveland and saw it for the first time in person.
I thought it was an important piece of Americana, he said. I just wanted to see it saved and preserved. If I could make some sort of business connection out of it, well, lets do it.
After all, if leg lamps were this popular, why not the house too?
A PINK NIGHTMARE
Jones wasnt sure what plans he had for the old place, but he knew his first steps getting rid of the vinyl siding that covered the house, painting it yellow and green as it was in the movie, changing the windows back to the old style.
He studied the movie, frame by frame, and gradually the interior came to look just like the film. The furniture, wallpaper and knick-knacks. The kitchen sink under which the little brother in A Christmas Story went to hide. A bar of Life Buoy soap just like the one Ralphie had to put in his mouth after being caught saying the queen-mother of dirty words.
It turns out that many grown-up fans of the movie like to hide under the sink too. Theyll even put soap in their mouths, leaving bite marks behind.
Jones found that out after he opened the house up to tours, which hed guessed was the best business plan.
The first day of business, he knew he had something special when he saw a blocks-long line out front, with people waiting hours to get in.
A Christmas Story House now draws 60,000 people a year, he said, half of that from Thanksgiving to New Years. The next busiest time is July and August. He has 25 full-time employees, more during the holidays, and still sells leg lamps as well as bunny suits, BB guns and figurines from the movie at his website, achristmasstoryhouse.com.
Jones, 39, spends a lot of time in Cleveland, but he has lived in Jacksonville for more than two years with his wife and their two children, aged 9 and 7. He moved after California raised its income-tax rate, deciding that Jacksonville was the right size and speed for him.
Up in Cleveland, he bought another house across the street for A Christmas Story museum costumes, photos and props, including the latest addition, a Red Ryder BB gun built specially for the film (its left-handed, to accommodate actor Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie). He also bought a house next to the museum to use as a gift shop.
In all, he figures he has $1.5 million in the project, some of that funded by home equity loans and credit cards.
Its clear the movie, and the house where it was filmed, hit some nostalgic, near-universal nerve.
People thank Jones, all the time, for restoring the house. Fans come back every year. Fans drive many hours to see it. Foreign tourists make detours to get there. One fan told him he watches the movie every night before going to sleep every single night of the year.
Jones figures thats because the story is about growing up. About imperfect, loving families. About looking back on it all, decades later.
Jones, soft-spoken and self-deprecating, relishes his role in all this. It all kind of flows for me. I have a degree in aerospace engineering, did Intelligence in the Navy. Yeah, Ill sell leg lamps.
He has a bit of a showman in him. There are even photos of him up in Ohio, throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game while clad head-to-toe in a pink bunny suit, just like the one poor Ralphie got from his Aunt Clara at Christmas.
Jones can imitate Ralphies dad: He looks like a deranged Easter Bunny. He looks like a pink nightmare!
And when Jones showed up for an interview in Jacksonville, he was happy to bring along his own personal leg lamp, as asked. But unbidden, just in case it was needed, he also brought his giant bunny outfit, and was happy to put it on just to get in the holiday spirit.
After all, as A Christmas Story demonstrates, nothing says Christmas like a leg lamp and a pink bunny suit.
Matt Soergel: (904) 359-4082
Source: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2015-12-24/story/leg-lamps-bb-guns-and-bunny-suits-christmas-story-connection-jackonville
