Not fra-gee-lay! Replica of 'A Christmas Story' leg lamp survives crash Artifact intact after SUV goes through cigar shop window

"A Christmas Story" replica leg lamp was not as "fra-gee-lay" as it looks, surviving intact after an SUV crashed into the Annapolis cigar shop window where it was displayed and falling to the ground .

The plastic lamp, accentuated with black fishnet stocking, normally is perched in the window of Chesapeake Pipe and Cigar, attracting passerby and loyal customers to the "modern man cave" of owner Mike Lohsl. He was preparing Thursday for a busy weekend ahead of the Masters Tournament when he heard the SUV crash through his storefront windows 30 minutes before opening.

One large ceiling-to-window was pushed off its frame and the other window shattered.

"We got through Mayan doomsday, we got through the earthquake, we got through a bunch of blizzards and superstorms. This is just another box to check off that this has happened," Lohsl said. "At least we didn't get hit by a meteor or something."

The lamp is well-known to fans of the 1983 movie about a young boy's Christmas in the 1930s. The father of the family proudly announced he has won a "major award," opening a large packing crate to find the leg lamp much to his wife's displeasure.

Before opening the crate, though, he laboriously and incorrectly reads out the word "fragile" stamped on the crate, suggesting it must be Italian - fra-gee-lay.

The lamp first appears in Jean Sheppard's 1966 book "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash" which was the basis for the movie.

The lamp later breaks under suspicious circumstances.

But its replica - the lamps are widely available - survived a much more violent battering, even landing across the jagged edges of the broken window.

Annapolis police said a 63-year-old woman in a Ford Explorer accidentally rammed into the store at 10:30 a.m. She was transported to a nearby hospital but was unharmed. A city inspector deemed the building safe.

Lohsl said it served as a "crash" course on his insurance policy.

Lohsl's shop is one of few places remaining where people can smoke indoors. The family-owned shop has a lounge in back where customers can hang out, watch sports tournaments and bring their own booze.

While the COVID-19 pandemic rocked many small businesses like Lohsl's, his consignment tobacco operation has done well thanks to his humidors stationed at 70 liquor stores across Anne Arundel County.

Chesapeake Pipe and Cigar was located in Edgewater for eight years before it moved to Solomons Island Road in Annapolis five years ago. The cigar shop is one of a few in town, a position that yields regular customers, including the husband of the driver in the crash.

"When she called him and told him she had just ran into a building he said to her 'Please tell me you didn't run into the cigar shop,'" Lohls said. "We have a rewards points program. And he said 'I guess I don't have enough points to cover this do I?"

Caption: A car crashed into the Chesapeake Pipe & Cigar shop sometime overnight Wednesday on Old Solomon's Road in Annapolis, but the beloved leg lamp survived. Mike Lohsl/Courtesy