Stoney and Diana Kersh finished a major remodel of their Arlington home this year. They ended up with a new and improved kitchen. But that wasn’t necessarily the main goal. They also needed more room for their vast and growing collection of Cowboys memorabilia.
They call it the Cowboys Museum. You can call it a severe case of Cowboys fever if you like. They don’t mind.
"Oh absolutely. It's running through my blood. It's pulsing in my veins,” Stoney Kersh said. "I would say it's probably about to its boiling point,” he said of the fever gripping the Cowboys nation.
He started collecting when he was a kid. He would search through football cards for any that had the Dallas star. Now, a married dad and a lifelong employee at the nearby Smucker’s plant, he decorates every inch of his home with Cowboys hats, buttons, figurines, bobbleheads, games, signed jerseys…pretty much anything and everything that bears the Dallas star.
His bathroom even has a toilet seat with a seat back from the old Texas Stadium.
"I don't even know how many pieces are in here. I don't know what it's worth and don't care. I just do it because I love the Dallas Cowboys. I always have," Stoney said.
And before you ask the question, yes, this is with his wife's blessing. Diana is just as big a Cowboys fan too.
"And it's wonderful to see people excited about something, you know,” Diana said. “They come through the door and they're just like 'WOW,'” she said of the frequent visitors to their personal Cowboys Museum.
Wow to the hand-painted Cowboys logo on the den floor, wow to the talking Emmitt Smith and Troy Aikman dolls, wow to the Ring of Honor he built over his backyard patio, and wow to the scale model of something he calls “Cowboys City” – a train set surrounding a hand-built model of AT&T Stadium complete with a tiny Tom Landry statue in its rightful place on the northeast side.
"From A to Z, I mean just everything you can imagine. If it's got Cowboys on it, there's something about it here," Stoney said.
That includes his Cowboys decorated pickup truck, his Pontiac Firebird, his customized Dallas Cowboys van, and his star-laden motorcycle.
Why you ask? Because he’s been a Cowboys fan as long as he can remember. He remembers the first time his dad took him to the old Texas Stadium. He says seeing the star on the 50-yard line for the first time took his breath away. And then there were the Monday night football games on TV when his dad made him go to bed at halftime, so he’d be ready for school the next day.
"Well he didn't know that I had a little 4-inch black and white TV that my grandma had given me under the bed. So as soon as he kissed me good night and shut that door, I watched the second half. I haven't missed a game since I was a little kid," Stoney said.
So if you are one of the newly infected with Cowboys Fever - Stoney and Diana say welcome to their bandwagon.
"I've never come off. I've been on there since I was a little kid. Everybody's a fan of a winner. And the Cowboys are a winner right now," Stoney said.
And at their Cowboys House at the corner of Redbud and Davis, they plan to be celebrating all the way to the Super Bowl.
And yes, they’d like to add those tickets to their collection too.