Let us take a break from the nerve-wracking doomsday headlines for just a moment and wrap our arms around some good news breaking in our own backyard. Because we all need a deep breath right about now.

And what a cleansing breath it is: Top Ten Records, the oft-overlooked Oak Cliff landmark flirting of late with obsolescence, will keep its doors open after all despite widely circulating rumors to the contrary. And it will do so with new operators adored for having resurrected a neighboring Jefferson Boulevard icon, the Texas Theatre, which was also once feared a goner in a town that tends to swallow its history.

Which is not just big news, but a welcome relief after the block encompassing Top Ten was bought a few weeks ago by investors snapping up properties in resurgent neighborhoods.

This significant development will involve, among other things, converting the store into a seller and renter of records and films focused almost exclusively on Dallas and Texas. Top Ten will be operated by a newly formed nonprofit, Oak Cliff Records & Library, spearheaded by, among others, the Texas Theatre's Barak Epstein and Adam Donaghey. It will count among its partners the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection at SMU, keeper of tens of thousands of rare film prints and video tapes, and, likely, the city of Dallas' estimable municipal archives. And it will preserve a storefront along Jefferson whose existence dates back to Elvis Presley's first-ever appearance on the pop charts.

"All the gifts are from the creator above," Polk said Saturday, when I stopped by for a visit.

Can't say I know Polk well. Top Ten Records is, by all accounts, Dallas' oldest record store — 61 years come October, the only peddler of vinyl left in an Oak Cliff neighborhood that once boasted three such emporiums. But it hasn't actually sold records for years, save for the seldom-thumbed-through cardboard box of dusty country-and-western 45s perched on the counter near the front door.

From left: Barak Epstein, Mike Polk and Adam Donaghey ((Robert Wilonsky))

Polk, 75, kept the place stocked mostly with hip-hop español and Tejano CDs, titles unfamiliar to the gringos who occasionally wandered in thinking this some fading hipster refuge tucked among the nearby quinceañera dress shops, botanicas and pesos-for-dollars exchanges. Let's be honest: Top Ten is probably most famous as Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit's last stop before he was gunned down by Oswald near 10th Street and Patton Avenue. Tourists stop by just to see the phone Tippit used on Nov. 22, 1963.

This much I do know: Polk's a sharp, sweet guy; asked me Saturday where my son was, though I'd only brought him once or twice, and not recently. Friends who know him well say he did what he had to to survive along Jefferson: He sold country in the '70s, then went metal for a bit, then all-Español to accommodate the neighborhood's demographic.

He'd been considering an exit strategy for a long time now but had resisted selling out. He will sit on the nonprofit's board with emeritus status.

"I am not religious," Polk said about the arrival Top Ten's new operators, "but I know there's a power up there."

Until Saturday, I thought it was closed until the nonprofit officially took over later this year. But after finding a spot to park along a crowded Jefferson Boulevard, I discovered its doors were indeed open with Polk still behind the counter, where he's been since he bought the place from J.W. Stark in 1977.

"Mr. Stark gave me $75 to put in the cash register and $100 to buy 45s," Polk said, standing at his usual spot. "He had a lot of stuff but it was deceptive advertising. It looked like we had everything, but we didn't have anything."

The phone for which Top Ten Records is, perhaps, most famous

This deal with the boys from the Texas has been unfolding for months. The proof rests in my Facebook messages: At 12:29 p.m. on June 27, 2016, I asked Barak Epstein, one of the operators at the Texas since 2010, if he had cellphone number for Mike Polk, longtime owner of Top Ten. I told Epstein I wanted to check in on the status of the store following a springtime clearance sale believed to be the beginning of the end.

Epstein, whom I met 14 years ago when he was working with splatstick filmmaking legend Lloyd Kaufman, asked that I stand down: "There will be new news soon about it," the far North Dallas native responded. He said, off the record last summer, that he'd been talking with Polk about converting the store to a nonprofit "archive" or sorts but didn't elaborate. I'd check in every few weeks; Epstein would explain why they were in a "holding pattern"; rinse, repeat.

An original sign dating to the 1950s ((Courtesy Barak Epstein))

But finally, they are ready to make the reveal — courtesy an Indiegogo campaign launching today, which is hoping to raise $40,000 for a long-overdue redo and the purchase of new inventory. Those so inclined can contribute as little as $9, the cost of the monthly subscription fee to rent records and view exclusive online content from the SMU film archives.

"We keep the history of the store intact, but what we're doing provides media literacy, cultural study and things donors would be interested in," Donaghey said. "There are other avenues for raising funds that help the community."

Question is, of course, how much of the community will remain.

Donaghey and Epstein on Saturday, inspecting the new digs their foundation will take over this summer

On Saturday, the real action was outside Top Ten: Perren Gasc, a principal at the commercial real estate investment company that just bought four blocks along Jefferson, was staring at its exterior decorated in streaks of red and yellow and orange and blotches of brown. He was asking Epstein and Donaghey if they wanted a new paint job, and if they had interest in keeping the air-conditioning unit hidden beneath the awning over the front door.

Gasc said the new owners intend to plant a new restaurant next to Top Ten, along with a "thrift store-speakeasy" nearby; some of the existing businesses will remain, while others will go.

This newspaper's archives overflow with obituaries for Jefferson Boulevard, the Oak Cliff thoroughfare paved, in part, with Works Progress Administration greenbacks. There were several fare-thee-wells in 1975 alone, when Sears, Roebuck and Co. packed up its dry goods and headed to the newly opened Red Bird Mall and J.C. Penney tucked tail and adiosed soon thereafter.

Top Ten's building housed an appliance store before it sold records. ((Top Ten Records))

Decades later, of course, it not only survives but thrives, looking not so different than it did when streetcars shared the pavement with automobiles — a bustling big city thoroughfare that resembles a small-town's Main Street. It's also, perhaps, the longest walkable stretch of retail left in the city, 10 big blocks of old and new and coming-soon dress shops, panaderias, furniture stores and hipster hangs. It, too, boasts some of the city's most iconic stops: the old Ravens Pharmacy and its menacing mascot; the Charco Broiler Steak House, likewise guarded by its rooftop bovine; and, of course, the Texas Theatre, no longer just the place where Lee Harvey Oswald was nabbed by Dallas PD.

And now and for the foreseeable future, Top Ten Records.

"If you start peeling away at those classics," Epstein said, "you lose Jefferson."