Stop and Smell the People

R.I.P. Jimmy Brown

I’ve done hundreds of Carolina Traveler stories. The one Andy and I did in Albemarle at the Music Store struck a nerve with viewers. It wasn’t the music store. It was what was on the second floor above the music store. It was a little boy’s dream come to life. So late in a man’s life.

Every week for about five years I’d get a letter or e-mail or phone call from someone wanting to know where that train display was?Eventually we posted a permanent link to the place on WCNC.com. I also kept Jimmy Brown’s number in my speed dial. After we did the story I visited the Albemarle Music Store every year. I brought my oldest son, Trevor, to see it. I was hoping to bring my baby boy, Crowley, to see it this coming Christmas.

It was a magical place. Andy and I were lucky to capture that magic on tape. I think Jimmy Brown was the magic. Yes there were dozens of model trains running on a half dozen different levels in a room that looked like it should have been at Disneyland, but the magic was still Jimmy.

Jimmy lived a life paycheck to paycheck. He ran a modest music store. It was the sort of shop you’d find in Mayberry. Locals would come and sit and talk and while a way half a day telling stories. It looked like a simple old fashioned music shop. If you didn’t know any better you would have come and gone and thought nothing of the Albemarle Music Shop. Quaint. Friendly. Unremarkable. Thousands did just that. Came bought music or an instrument and left.

But Jimmy Brown let our camera upstairs and the Albemarle Music Shop would never be the same. We aired our story in December or 2002 or 3. It’s been a while. I’ve forgotten. It was so long ago I wasn’t yet taking still photos of our subjects.

Jimmy told me after our story aired the store was swamped with visitors… and they never stopped coming. He told me once that our story turned his little model train fantasyland into a business. He started selling model trains. People came from all over the country to see his train world and buy a train from him.

Jimmy gave us all the credit. But the truth is viewers only react this way to the truth of a story, not to the words I wrote or the editing Andy did. People reacted to Jimmy Brown. An aging man with health issues who decided one day to fulfill his childhood dream before it was too late. So he cleared out the second floor of his music store and started building. He and some friends ceased to be adults. They crawled inside their childhood dreams and built something adults no longer can imagine.

I said it earlier, it was magical. You could sit for hours and never see the same thing twice. Everyone I brought had the same experience: it turns you back into a little boy. Jimmy was a man of suffering health. And Jimmy was a boy who fulfilled his dream.

His model train world is stunning.

Jimmy passed away 4th of July weekend. I don’t know what will happen to the music store or the train display on West Main Street in Albemarle. I do know that Jimmy Brown was a good man and a kind soul. He would be mad at me for fussing over him and for saying this… he will be missed more than he could have ever imagined. You brought smiles to thousands of little boys and girls of every age, Jimmy. You were an original. I was proud to tell your story.

Rest in peace, my friend… MR