In 1962 or ‘63, an old railroader named Tex Dunn, owned a penny arcade here in town. He loved 25th Street and was a big drinker at many of the bars that the street had to offer. One night he was having a drink at the Kokomo and asked Eddie Simone the owner of the Kokomo Club at the time, “Why don’t you let me paint that wall?” 

Eddie responded, “Go ahead and paint the son of a bitch.”

Tex replied, “What do you want?” 

Eddie told him to “put me a damn river, put me an old cabin, and put me some kind of animal.”

Tex said, “Okay, so I need a few things. I need a four inch brush, a gallon of white paint and a half a dozen tubes of color and I’ll start in the morning.”

“Okay” Eddie replied but thought to himself, that’s going to be something else with a damn four inch brush.

“But Ed there’s one other thing that I need” Tex added. “When I start in the morning, I want a fifth of Jim Beam on the bar. When the Jim Beam’s gone, I’m gone.” 

It took Tex three days, three bottles of Beam and one four inch brush to finish the mural. Back in the day, there were 38 Tex Dunn murals in bars along 25th Street, but they are all gone. All except THE MURAL in the Kokomo Club.

As told by Eddie Simone, October 2020