After Ralphie's chilly meeting with Santa, he went back to the house in the Tremont section of Cleveland where "A Christmas Story" was filmed. The house has been turned into a museum that pays homage to the movie.

By Marylynne Pitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

CLEVELAND -- No one had to double-dog-dare Brian Jones to buy the house where Bob Clark directed three exterior scenes from the 1983 movie "A Christmas Story."

		If you go ... A Christmas Story House: 3159 W. 11th St., Cleveland. The house is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays; the first tour begins at 10:30 a.m., and the last at 4 p.m. The house is open from noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Special opening times and reservations for group tours are available. Admission for adults is $5; it's $3 for children 12 and under. To arrange tours or for more information, call 1-216-298-4919 or visit www.achrist- masstoryhouse.com. Directions: From Downtown Cleveland, take Interstate 90 and get off at the West 14th/Abbey Road exit. Take West 14th to Clark Avenue and turn left. Turn right onto West 11th. The house is on your left at Rowley Avenue.

After all, the California businessman had already succeeded in making and selling replicas of the movie's famous leg lamp, a fishnet-covered leg anchored by a black high- heeled pump that's topped by a fringed shade.

The house, which Mr. Jones restored to look like 9-year-old Ralphie Parker's home in the holiday classic set in the 1940s, opened to tourists the weekend after Thanksgiving.

More than 4,300 visited that first weekend, with the line of tourists stretching for more than two blocks. Mr. Jones calls them "my fellow Ralphies, as opposed to Trekkies. That's why the movie is so popular. Every scene is funny."

By the second Sunday in December, a total of 10,167 tourists had passed through the home, located on this city's west side in Tremont, a historic neighborhood five miles from downtown.

Mr. Jones calls the number of visitors "awesome. To be honest, I really didn't know what to expect because I've never done this before."

But he figures that if the actual site of the filming of the 1989 movie "Field of Dreams," located in the northeastern Iowa town of Dyersville, could draw 50,000 visitors a year, a similar attraction located five miles from Downtown Cleveland would see even more tourists.

"It is amazing to see 10,000 people in two weeks," Mr. Jones said.

Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette The infamous leg lamp in the living room of the house in Cleveland where "A Christmas Story" was filmed.

Visitors can stand on the porch and see the street where Darren McGavin gestured excitedly while telling his wife, played by Melinda Dillon, how to position the leg lamp in the window.

At age 30, Mr. Jones knows a bit about positioning, too. With some of last year's $700,000 in revenue from what he called Red Rider Leg Lamps, he spent $240,000 to transform the house and its interior.

He bought the property just before Christmas in 2004. He paid 150,000, outbidding a $115,000 offer on eBay. His wife, Beverly, who was aboard a U.S. Naval amphibious assault ship, alerted him to the sale via e-mail.

Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette Brian Jones, who bought the Cleveland home behind him where scenes from the movie "A Christmas Story" were filmed, shows off a BB gun similar to the one used in the movie. Now called "Christmas Story House," it opened the weekend after Thanksgiving.

"It was your standard rental property," said Mr. Jones, whose military bearing, the result of six years in the U.S. Navy, makes him seem even taller than 6 foot 3 inches.

Set on a narrow street in a working class neighborhood, the 2 1/2-story home was built in 1895 as a duplex. Now a single-family residence, it is sheathed in warm wooden siding and fresh, hunter green paint. With its polished oak floors, globe-shaped porch lamps and colorful Christmas lights, the house is a kind of glowing, Midwestern Taj Mahal.

The movie "A Christmas Story" is a nostalgia-rimmed holiday cocktail about a boy's desire for a Red Ryder carbon-action, 200-shot range model air rifle with a special sight, a compass in the stock and a sun dial.

For the 10th year in a row, TBS will air the movie continually for 24 hours starting at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Last year's marathon attracted 45.4 million viewers.

Throughout the movie, our likable hero must run a gantlet of grinches. Besides the typical schoolyard bully, there's Miss Shields, a dragon-eyed taskmaster of a teacher and even his mother, who sticks Lifebuoy soap in Ralphie's mouth after he utters the f-word instead of fudge. At the local department store, Santa and his elves are impatient and foul-tempered.

In a visceral way, Mr. Jones understands Ralphie's fondest wish because he had one, too. At the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland, he studied aerospace engineering in hopes of becoming a naval fighter pilot. But his less-than-perfect vision forced him to bail on that dream.

To cheer him up, his parents, Wayne and Cindy, sent him a "special award" just like the leg lamp that arrives in a wooden crate during one of the movie's best-known scenes.

Mr. Jones liked it so much that he decided to make leg lamps as a hobby when he left the Navy. The next question he had to answer was "Where do you get 1,000 legs?" He found them from a supplier in New York and the hobby became a business. The tall totem of kitsch actually lights up.

Then he asked Lt. Corey Jacobs, a naval buddy, to set up a Web site for his company, Red Rider Leg Lamps. The two men, who live in San Diego, met in 2002 at the Fleet Intelligence Training Center.

"I knew he'd be successful," Mr. Jacobs said. "He's a very driven person and very business-savvy as well. I didn't realize how much of a following there was for the movie."

After the house opened for tours, the combined traffic on the two Web sites -- one for the house and the other for lamps, increased 20 times.

"Brian's Web site just literally went off the charts. He actually brought down the network where the servers were housed," said Mr. Jacobs, who said capacity has been improved to handle the influx.

His former naval buddy, Mr. Jacobs added, is just getting started.

"I look for him to build on and expand the museum and everything around the house. He has some great ideas and I really think he's going to follow through on them," Mr. Jacobs said.

Inside the front door of the renovated home is a living room with sofa, a leg lamp, chairs and an old-fashioned radio. It looks as if a bowling ball sits atop the radio. Mr. Jones lifted the cover, revealing that the ball is actually a shot glass holder.

Much of the furniture has been donated by Cleveland residents because, Mr. Jones said, after investing so much in the project, had little money left over to buy antiques. He made an exception for a cast-iron sink in the kitchen, which cost him $200.

A staircase leads to the second floor, where the bedroom that Ralphie shared with his little brother Randy includes an Emerson Electric fan, a globe, a set of World Scope Encyclopedia and the bare wooden frame of a twin bed.

While the home's gleaming exterior is appealing, one visitor expected more in the way of interior set decoration.

"I expected a lot more of the boys' props and the beds to be made," said Angela Staller, a tourist from Sheffield Lake, Ohio. She thought the room would include clothing and the Boys' Life and Look magazines that are seen in the film.

When the 15-minute tour ends, tourists can walk across the street to another house that Mr. Jones bought in January. It contains a gift shop with copies of the film's shooting script, T-shirts and two rooms full of movie memorabilia, including vintage toys and the infamous red snow suit that prevented Randy from putting his arms down. In one of the rooms, the movie plays continuously on a television.

For movie buffs with sweet tooths, there are chocolates in the shape of a Red Ryder BB gun, a leg lamp, Bumpus dogs and Ralphie's glasses, all made by Kathy Pannetti of Cleveland, who estimates that she owns about 600 candy molds.

Initial crowds were so thick at the ticket window that Mr. Jones had to send someone around to sell tickets while people stood in the long line. To ease the crunch, he has purchased a blue house located next door to the gift shop and homemade museum. He plans to sell tickets out of the new property once it is renovated.

"We'll probably move the gift shop out of the museum into the blue house. I want to talk to Peter Billingsley to see if he'll donate the bunny suit." (Peter Billingsley, now 35 and a producer, played Ralph Parker and, in one of the best scenes, models the bunny suit, a Christmas gift from an aunt.)

Mr. Jones is not worried about how many visitors will come during the rest of the year because the leg lamp business is also seasonal. During the holidays, he sells 75 to 100 leg lamps a day and maybe three a day the rest of the year.

Mr. Jones, who has ridden a whirl of national media attention, sounded exuberant.

"We've done so well that we can live off of Christmas. Whatever comes by in summer is just gravy. That's how leg lamps have been."

But Mr. Jones also hopes there are more visitors out there like Erin Reed.

Ms. Reed, 28, of Fort Wayne, Ind., and her fiance, Jeff Dubois, 39, are huge fans of the movie who are trying to arrange a wedding inside the "Christmas Story" house.

They've obtained the permission of Mr. Jones, who, of course, has agreed to throw in a leg lamp for free.