The Pecan Park Eagle

Summer clouds reflect for the last time today off the window of a store that has been open to the kids and young at heart of Houston since 1948.

Today, June 30, 2010, is the last day for business in the 61 plus year life of the Variety Fair Five and Dime Store at 2415 Rice Boulevard in the Village Shopping Center west of Rice University.

The rent’s getting too high for the store to keep running on a business model that’s been outdated for the sale of children’s toys for at least half the time the store has been open. That fact alone, however, cannot possibly tell it all. It just measures the end game dollar epitaph on Variety Fair. What began and lived on as an incredibly inspired and loving gift to all from a shining soul named Benny Klinger is now gone forever at the close of Wednesday business for the most basic of business reasons. Stores that lose money eventually close their doors. This door-closing simply took sixty-one and some odd number of extra months years to get here.

So, what hasc kept Variety Fair open all this time? Today is the last opportunity to sort of, maybe, find out for yourself, first-hand.

If you’ve never been there before, or you haven’t been there in a long time, you owe it to yourself to drop by the store today, if at all possible. Take the kids and grandkids with you too. They will never again see anything real along these same Variety Fair merchandising lines in their lifetime. That’s for sure.

There's plenty of angle storefront parking within two blocks either way of Variety Fair. Everything in the store is for sale at 50% off its normal low price.

To those who don’t look too deeply at what happened at Variety Fair for over six decades, what they see may seem to be a perplexing case of chaos triumphing over order. Cheap toy merchandise is piled high and deep in stalls and shelves all over the place. There are no computer records of what is in stock. There aren’t even any computers. You simply have to turn things over on the shelves to discover what may be underneath – or look for the general theme of toys in the area you may be searching. Pretty soon you snap to how easy it is to find the Halloween gift section apart from the Christmas toy area.

Even the kitchen sink is for sale today!

You will be able to shop in air-conditioned comfort with your neighbors.

When your shopping is done, the family will ring up your sale at this classic cash register. You will get a written receipt from a handy nearby adding machine. That's Benny's daughter and store owner Cathy Irby in blue ringing up a customer as this photo was taken, as were all others here, on June 29th.

As a kid, I didn’t grow up in the Village area. My only trip here came about 1949, when I was 11 and my brother John was 7. Our mom had brought us to Variety Fair by car for a look-see visit that one time because she had some other shopping business in the Village that day. My memory of this trip was not so much tied to Variety Fair. These kinds of stores were a dime a dozen back in the late 1940s. No. My recollection was tied to the nice man who ran the store. He made us laugh and feel good about ourselves. He made us glad that we had dropped in to just look around and say hello.

That man was Benny Klinger.

Ask Benny Klinger if he was having a nice day and you would get this kind of answer: "I always have a nice day. Got it worked out with the man upstairs. There's a little 4x4 square of blue sky that travels over my head all day, no matter where I walk. It never rains on my parade. Now, don't you think you deserve the same deal? If so, I'll put in a good word for you. In the meanwhile, maybe you will find something here in the store that will help make the sun shine a little brighter until the real thing comes along!"

You just don’t meet a Benny Klinger everyday. In all the times as an adult that I “just dropped in” to the store near Christmas time and kid birthdays, I know that I was also stopping by for a dose of Benny. He knew how to reach everybody with something good, positive, loving, and giving – whether you bought anything or not. When Benny Klinger passed away in 1998, I felt a great personal loss – and I was simply one his thousands of customers, not some central character in his daily life.

Benny's working name tag has remained by the register since he put it there on his last store day in 1998. If he could only come back and put it on again today, the store wouldn't have to close, but that isn't going to happen. Is it?

There are physical reminders of Benny throughout Variety Fair. Even if there were not, his ghost would still find you. My grown son Neal and I went to Variety Fair for our last trip there yesterday. We both left the store feeling better about everything. We also left with a few last chance souvenirs of the man and the store.

On our last trip to Variety Fair, we bought some toys for the kids in our lives, and I bought this little Frankenstein bobble head, just in case we decide to recreate "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" in our home baseball museum. Unfortunately, Frankie's tied up in another role for now. He's playing the part of the 2010 baseball season in our summer recreation of "Berkman & Lee Meet Frankenstein."

Thank you, Benny Klinger! And now that you are where you are, please don't forget to put in a good word for the rest of us!

Variety Fair is not the triumph of chaos over order. It is the victory of love over money. And that is why the place lasted for as long as it did.

Tags: Benny Klinger, History, Houston, Variety Fair

This entry was posted on June 30, 2010 at 11:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.