Reddit debated whether it was the last of the original six Tom Thumbs<\/a>.<\/p>\nSometime in the 1960s, give or take, the building was converted into a thrift store that operated under numerous monikers, among them 2nd Avenue Thrift and Prime Thrift. For as long as I can recall, it\u2019s been Thrift Store Center, where a sign posted inside the front door promised \u201cNew Stock Updated Hourly.\u201d The parking lot was never less than packed; the front curb, always crowded. But it closed a few months back. Nobody really knows why.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to school in clean clothes from there,\u201d Beachum told me. \u201cNeiman Marcus clothes, too! That store had everything. Stuff I\u2019d never seen anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Versie Martin and Barabas Bennett on the front porch of Martin\u2019s longtime Pine Street home. Martin said she gets calls about selling it \u201c30-40 times a day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n
About an hour earlier, a 62-year-old South Dallas lifer named Barabas Bennett had said something similar as we stood on a Pine Street front porch, just a couple of blocks off Second.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThat thrift store was South Dallas\u2019 Neiman Marcus,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cThat\u2019s because they had everything. You needed an iron, that\u2019s where you went. Or clothes, furniture, household items \u2014 you know, stuff. Seek, and ye shall find.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe prices used to be reasonable,\u201d said Bennett, who wore a necklace made of washers and bells he\u2019d bought at the thrift store. \u201cBut I also called it the South Dallas Neiman Marcus because if you added 49 cents more to the price of everything in there, you could have just bought it brand-new.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t reach the building\u2019s longtime owners, who live in Maryland and whose numbers are all seemingly disconnected. A guy working at the tire store across the street said a store manager said they weren\u2019t getting as much new inventory as they used to, which he didn\u2019t believe. Not in this economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat place was still popular,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cWhen I drove by and saw it boarded up, I did a double take. Maybe someone made the owner an offer he couldn\u2019t refuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The closing sign still hangs on the Thrift Store Center, a former grocery store that sits on the entire corner of Second Avenue and Elsie Faye Heggins Street.<\/p>\n
Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n
Bennett was over visiting 94-year-old Versie Martin, who\u2019d come outside to enjoy a strangely cool breeze cutting through her front porch on a searingly hot midmorning. Behind her home is Opportunity Park; behind that, Oakland Cemetery. Her view is of the brand-new pavement the city just finished pouring on Meyers Street, with vacant, overgrown lots on each side that were once filled with homes whose residents Martin remembers as though they\u2019d just moved away.<\/p>\n
Martin said she bought this house on Pine in 1962 and receives \u201cat least 30-40 calls a day\u201d about selling it. She said the house was built in 1950 \u2014 \u201cthe last house built on this block.\u201d Which would have been around the time that Tom Thumb opened.<\/p>\n
That boarded-up thrift store, these neighbors said, is emblematic of the changes that have swept across these South Dallas neighborhoods, where two- and three-story boxes tower over countless tumbledown homes held up with plywood and hope.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The view from Versie Martin\u2019s front porch.<\/p>\n
Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re just pushing over these old frame houses \u2014 whole blocks of \u2019em, on Birmingham and Metropolitan [avenues],\u201d Bennett said. \u201cThey\u2019re boarding up buildings on Second. And they\u2019re building these houses we can\u2019t afford.\u201d<\/p>\n
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I mentioned that the city\u2019s yet again discussing the possibility of remaking Second. Bennett laughed. \u201cLittle by little, the new world order is in effect,\u201d he said. \u201cIn 10, 15 years South Dallas won\u2019t even look the same.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Martin sighed and said, \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019ll be that long.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSee that pawn shop?\u201d asked the man who tried to sell me an old five-gallon Igloo cooler Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,952,88671,88575,88000],"class_list":["post-433883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-retail","tag-tp-commercial-real-estate","tag-tp-south-dallas","tag-tp-dallas-city-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}