Photography by Jessica Turner
If W.K. Jeffus comes knocking at your door, don’t be alarmed. He’s probably there to sell you the history of your house.
Jeffus was born in Oak Cliff, grew up on Wentworth, “over there behind the Tom Thumb,” and is a 1965 graduate of Sunset High School. The two-story 1912 Victorian home he bought in what is now considered Bishop Arts cost $12,000 in 1971.
It had been divided into six apartments, and he lived in one of them while playing landlord to colorful residents for the first six months.
There’s a construction crane in the sky a few lots over from the house now. That developer pays Jeffus $1,000 a month to rent a nearby empty lot for storing equipment and materials. Boxy apartments and cool modern condos now line the opposite side of 10th Street.
Jeffus remembers the time a two-story brick apartment building had burned down across the street, and he saw a displaced resident drag his bed springs and blankets into the chinaberry tree to sleep there for the night.
This is not the same neighborhood it was back then.
“It’s certainly changed a lot,” he says. “I guess for the better, except that the taxes are higher than a cat’s back.”
Jeffus lives in DeSoto now, and the house on 10th Street is where he stores the trappings of his trade. He calls it “the house of history.”
People solicit to buy his house all the time, but he’s not selling. “I don’t want to sell it,” he says. “Nobody has named a price, but I’m not interested in a price.”
Inside, stacks of newspaper pages are piled on tables or leaned against walls or dusty furniture that was stored here long ago.
Jeffus archives each page on cardboard and plastic sheeting, which he salvages from a Jefferson Boulevard mattress store and cuts to size with a razor blade knife.
It’s hard to believe any of this stuff is organized, but Jeffus has a system. He organizes everything by “route,” that is, they correspond to places on the map. He can put a few piles in his trunk and drive around looking for buyers on that route.
He keeps his eye out for renovated commercial buildings or homes all over Dallas whose new owners and tenants could be his next customers. The esoteric Dallas ephemera he might try to sell you likely will be paper — a postcard, an advertisement, a newspaper page. If you’re lucky, he might even have photos, magazines, blueprints, records or receipts.
Photography by Jessica Turner
Besides an engaging conversation about Dallas history, opening the door to him could land you a former resident’s wedding announcement to frame and put in a hallway nook, or a story about a bowling-league champion who once lived in your house. There is no story too small for Jeffus.
A former detective and skip-tracer, he’s collected all of this over many years, mostly from estate sales. Much of his vast newspaper archives were cut from a cache of bound volumes he came across years ago. He doesn’t charge much for these nostalgic things, maybe a few tens or twenties.
When commercial property such as hotels are redeveloped, sold and resold, it gives Jeffus the opportunity to market his stuff multiple times to various owners.
It’s a niche that has kept him in groceries for decades.
One thing about W.K. Jeffus, known as Wayne: He’s old school. He points to himself with both thumbs: “Old. School.”
Jeffus carries a flip phone, and if it can’t be handwritten, he taps it up on his manual typewriter, and he still uses Mapsco to get around Dallas. To contact him about the history of your home or business, call 214.941.5238.
