OGDEN — The two blocks that make up Ogden's Historic 25th Street are a place where people greet each other because they are acquainted and often when they aren't.
Gail Cramer is a 25th Street regular. Passing a fellow pedestrian in the 200 block, she comments on the weather and soon a conversation is under way that progresses to an invitation to meet her friends at the Kokomo Club.
On the edge of a group of buildings that once housed brothels, opium dens and gambling parlors, the bar is
strange blend of run-down, Old West and neighborhood-friendly. One regular, Randy Thornton, says he's been coming to the club for 15 years.
"It's kinda like Cheers, where everybody here knows your name," he said with a wink.
Thornton says the Kokomo is the oldest neighborhood hangout on the street, but age here is relative. It may be the oldest of the modern era, but it certainly is predated by several surrounding buildings. Still, to Clynn Wickham, who started spending time here in 1955, it's an establishment with traditions of its own.
Clynn says the man who painted a mural of outdoor scenery and wildlife completely covering the long wall opposite the bar is dead.
"All the interesting people on this street are dead," he says, a gap-tooth grin breaking across his face above a white scruffy beard.
Thornton, Wickham, Cramer and others gather around what appears to once have been a pool table, while every stool at the bar is filled. Deer antlers decorate a low-hanging light suspended over the table, and the entire big room is a marked contrast to the flower pots and benches that line the sidewalk outside — tokens of the city's efforts to make the street appealing to visitors. All the customers know each other and nearly everybody is called by a name other than the one their mothers chose.
Joe Mamma says he got the nickname as a teenager when he did jobs around street taverns — illegally because of his age. Somebody on stage called him "Mamma Joe," and the name stuck .
Joe has been on 25th Street for "27 or 28 years."
"You come on the street and you make your own way," he said. "If you don't you don't stay long."
He tells stories about the "mafia" on the street who had the money and could "put the fear into ya." Then he launches into a rambling description of the tunnels that local legend says were dug under the stores from the Union Station depot to Grant Avenue.
"The Chinese railroad workers dug them and made opium dens out of 'em," he says with a wide smile. "Then during Prohibition, the moonshiners kept them full of home brew."
Of course, the tunnels don't appear on any master plans or in the local guide books. Tales of the street caving in because of the labyrinth aren't documented in any history books. But on 25th Street, it's the stories that count.
E-mail: karras@desnews.com