by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
The Curry Thomas Hardware store on Beach Boulevard has been helping with honey-do lists and hunting trips since 1947.
Founded by Charles Thomas, his sons Terry, Matt, Steve and Tim have kept the business going and expanded to three stores in Jacksonville. The first store was on Main Street next to Andrew Jackson High, but current locations include Beach Boulevard, Englewood Avenue and Baymeadows Road. The first store moved from Main Street to Beach Boulevard in 1952 and has become an animal sanctuary wrapped around a hardware store.
“Some folks take mounts home and they don’t fit,” said Steve Thomas. “So they bring them here for everyone to enjoy.”
The mounted animals include those found in America like elk, ram, bear, fox, turkey and deer. There are also more exotic mounts from Africa. Cape Buffalo hang from a pillar in the store and a light brown-coated eland displays his long straight horns. The Jaguars (football) nation can also be fooled by the mounted leopard at the front of the store. They are similar animals, but leopards are found in Africa while jaguars roam Central America and Mexico. The hardware store is also one of the oldest active gun shops in Jacksonville.
“You break ‘em and I fix ‘em,” said Vince Walker, a gunsmith and self-professed grouch who works at the store to support his fondness for firepower. “This way I can keep an eye out if anything good comes in.”
He has also donated a couple of mounts to the store’s collection including a skull and horns from a Cape Buffalo and a shoulder mount of a kudu that he harvested while on a trip to Africa.
“I try to bring it home and my wife tells me I can’t bring it in the house,” said Walker with a chuckle.
You can see from wall-to-wall in the store unlike its big box retail competition and the employees call a lot of the customers by their first name.
“We moved over into this store in 1975 and once we got done moving we found out that we had only filled up about a quarter of the store,” said Steve Thomas. “We really didn’t know how big it was until we got in here.”
More space provided room for friendly features like a row of chairs for customers to sit in front of the gun cases.
“We call it liar’s row,” said Mike Dekle, an outdoors writer and regular on the row. “It’s also known as the peanut gallery.”
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