Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/271585
LONG BEFORE TIM ALLEN PORTRAYED THE HOME HANDYMAN, YOU WERE THE REAL DEAL, APPEARING IN A HOW-TO-FIX IT PRINT COLUMN, AS WELL AS TELEVISION APPEARANCES AND A WEEKLY RADIO SHOW THAT AIRED FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS. DID YOU TAKE OVER YOUR DAD'S ROLE AS MR. FIX-IT, JUST A LITTLE MORE VISIBLY? I'm not sure I would say take over, but yes. One day when I was still quite young, one of our regular customers, Eddy Williams, told me I could use what I learned working in the store for rest of my life. I made much of my living conveying that information in print, on the radio and TV. When Houston Home and Garden magazine was starting, I pitched my photography skills. Don Reynolds, the magazine's first editor, realized I was raised in a hardware store and asked if I knew how to fix things at home. I did, most of them. Then he asked if I would be their home improvements editor and write how-to articles. I confessed I flunked English in high school and was a horrible speller. Don said, "We have copy editors that will fix those things if you can get the facts right." I've always been a very lucky guy. CAN YOU GUESS HOW MANY SCREWS YOU'VE STOCKED OR POUNDS OF NAILS YOU'VE SOLD IN THE 68 YEARS OF BUFFALO HARDWARE? I have no idea. Since we sell nails by the pound from open bins, often a customer will need, like, eight, and we'll just comp them. We've easily given away as many nails as we've sold. We also sell screws by the piece or box — lots of them, just one at a time. THE STORE HAS QUITE A BREADTH OF PRODUCTS. GIVE US AN IDEA OF SOME OF THE ODDEST ONES. Well, we had lava lamps the first time around, hula hoops, Slip 'n Slides and other trendy things. We sold washboards for a long time; there may still be one here. We have 50-pound bags of dried molasses. Gardeners use it to feed the beneficial bacteria in the soil, and ranchers use it to bait wild hog traps. We have a hand-crank butter churn — not a hot item, I must admit. Our inventory was very much shaped by customer request. We figured if one customer was interested in the product, others might be, too. BEFORE SUR LA TABLE AND WILLIAMS-SONOMA ARRIVED, YOU CORNERED THE MARKET SELLING UPSCALE COOKWARE AND COOKBOOKS. IT FIT RIGHT INTO THE MIX, DIDN'T IT? The cookware department opened soon after dad bought the store. Joel McLendon had just started his housewares rep firm. He told me that after much arm-twisting, Dad consented to stock Rubbermaid and Pyrex products. It worked, so the department grew. Every time I went to market, I would thank Joel. We've lasted this long because of our cookware department. I tell some people we are a cookware store that sells hammers and fertilizer. FOR THOSE WHO WONDER WHY YOU DIDN'T SELL THE STORE OR PASS IT TO ANOTHER GENERATION IN THE FAMILY, RATHER THAN CLOSING IT, WHAT DO YOU TELL THEM? We did try to sell the store, first very quietly, then louder for two years. Today's hardware stores are huge, and if you join one of the buying co-ops, they'll give you a store full of merchandise for free and lend you the money you need for other things. We were a small store and wanted to be paid for our inventory. All of my siblings had their fill of working in the store and moved on to other things. TAKING EARLY RETIREMENT (AT 66), YOU'LL HAVE A CHANCE TO DO A LOT OF THINGS YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO DO. WHAT TOPS YOUR LIST? I've been thinking about retiring after the summer I was nine and counted all those fasteners. I just couldn't figure out the underwriting part of it. Since 1999 I've been a permanent student at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Glassell School. For the last decade, I've taken watercolor from Arthur Turner. Some of my paintings are in the school's Perimeter Gallery, in fact. I plan to paint, return to building sculptures, tinker with our 1930s house, Bedlam Manor, read, travel some and take lots of naps. of YOUR DAD, RICHARD BROWN, GREW UP ON A SMALL FARM IN VINCENT, ALABAMA, AND HAD A REPUTATION FOR BEING THE GUY WHO COULD FIX ALMOST ANYTHING. WAS OWNING A HARDWARE STORE DESTINED TO BE? Dad always wanted a hardware store, and when Buffalo went up for sale in 1948, he jumped on it. He also liked designing and building things and built most of the fixtures in Buffalo Hardware, as well as made most of the furniture in the house I grew up in. WHILE IN COLLEGE, WWII BROKE OUT, AND YOUR FATHER ENLISTED IN THE NAVY, WORKING IN THE INTELLIGENCE DEPARTMENT. BRIEFLY STATIONED IN NEW ORLEANS, HE MET YOUR MOM AT A USO EVENT, THEN WAS TRANSFERRED TO SAN ANTONIO, WHERE HE WOULD MEET HOUSTONIAN BILL DICKEY, HIS COMMANDING OFFICER, WHO BECOME A DEAR CHUM. TELL US HOW THAT FRIENDSHIP CHANGED THE COURSE OF HIS LIFE AND CAREER. Dad went to business school and was working in the office of a steel mill when the war started. The navy said he didn't meet their minimum weight requirements, so he gorged on bananas to gain weight until they let him in. Meeting Bill Dickey (Mr. Dickey in those days) shaped the future of our branch of the Brown family. Both Dickey and dad loved tennis, and their friendship grew. Dad and his siblings had made a red-clay tennis court on a bit of flat land at the farm. When the war ended, Dickey asked dad what his plans were. He didn't have any, other than marrying mom, so Dickey asked dad to work for him in his lumberyard, Avalon Mill and Lumber on Westheimer, located where The Regency House stands now. In 1946, Buffalo Hardware Company opened across from the lumberyard on land Mr. Dickey owned. The original owner lived on the bayou and named the store after it. After the war, Avalon Center was built where the drugstore of the same name (now Stone Mill Bakery) stood. By 1948, Buffalo went on the market. Dad pulled together all the money he had saved but only had about half of what he needed. Dickey stepped up with the rest and became a (very) silent partner and his landlord. I'm not sure there was an actual lease back then — probably just a handshake. (The partnership was so silent, in fact, that I didn't find out about it until late the '70s or early '80s, when Dad bought Dickey out and made us, his children, stockholders.) In addition to my brothers and sister (along with Dickey's son, Tommy and grandson, Charlie), mom also worked at Buffalo. But that was not her first job in Avalon Center. The dress store Isabell Gerhart was located in the center and she was Mrs. Gerhart's first employee and waited on their first customer, since Gerhart was too nervous. After we were grown, Mom did some of the hardware store's bookkeeping. HOW DIFFERENT WAS THE ORIGINAL FOOTPRINT FROM THE SIZE BUFFALO EVENTUALLY GREW TO BE? The original store was the eastern (Kirby side) 20 feet of the store. At some point, Dad moved two slots west into what was the restaurant, Whitby's. Through time, he knocked down walls, reclaiming the original store area. In 1994, we took on one more slot, Agnes' Beauty Salon, to the west. We are now 88 feet wide. JIM, YOU LITERALLY GREW UP IN THAT STORE, WORKING SUMMERS THERE SINCE YOU WERE NINE. WHAT FASCINATED YOU MOST ABOUT SEEING YOUR DAD AT WORK? I was fascinated with how much he knew about so many things, how willing he was to freely share his knowledge, even if it didn't result in a sale. S ay it isn't so. After 68 years as a fixture at the corner of Westheimer and Kirby, providing everything from batteries to nails by the pound to Cuisinart mixers catering to a loyal cadre of customers, an era has come to a close: Buffalo Hardware shuttered its doors. Legendary owner, Richard Brown's prodigal son Jim, shares a slice of history about this iconic family-owned store that's been part of our lives for generations. INSIDE The Head of JIM BROWN MOHICANS THE THE DURING THE FINAL DAYS OF BUFFALO HARDWARE, LAURANN CLARIDGE SITS DOWN WITH JIM BROWN TO REFLECT. LAST Jim Brown's father, Richard Brown, with a hand-built model of the center, 1947 Richard Brown, in WWII uniform A last walk-thru before the sale. JENNY ANTILL Jim Brown Jim in the mezzanine office JENNY ANTILL P O R T R A I T S B Y J E N N Y A N T I L L Richard Brown and Bill Dickey, 1996 A poignant vignette