To understand the appeal of the Brooklyn Tavern, one needs to look no further than the first two lunch time customers of the day -- Olympia's Fred Saeger and his son Charlie -- enjoying a small pizza and two sodas. They came to the tavern on their lunch break, to rest from the summer sun, for one simple reason.

"It's a cool old place", Fred Saeger said.

It's quickly apparent this isn't the first time they've come in for lunch, since owner Ray Damitio knows what the men want before they order it. "Fred wants a Pepsi the minute he walks in", Damitio simply stated. Every person who comes in for lunch or a quick drink is greeted by their first name, like it's a friend coming over for lunch instead of someone paying for their meal. "Most people I know and it's almost like inviting them into my house" Damitio said. "I probably know 80 percent of the customers who come in here. Of that 20 percent I say I don't know, I know who they are, I just don't know their names."

It's that familiarity from Damitio, a retired veteran and former car dealer, that the patrons say keeps them coming back

"There's no place like this place", said Ron Caton, another regular who brought smoked fish to share with the others.

But what makes it so special?

"The owner," Caton said. "He's a class act character."

Damitio, who's owned the tavern for 12 years, said he's just continuing the tradition that appealed to him as a young man. Born and raised in Cedarville, he said be used to come to the tavern with his first wife. "We'd come out here to hunt all the time", Damitio said. "On a hot day we'd come in for a cold one, on a cold day we'd come in to get hot by the fire." Then, when he saw a "For Sale" sign 12 years ago, Damitio decided to buy the tavern. "The tavern made an impression on me and I had a lot of good memories about it." he said. It was nine months after Damitio, 74, bought the building that the real story begins, though. After returning from a trip to Indonesia, the owner returned to find a little less of the building, which was built by Andy Ivnic in 1927.

"It burned to the ground completely," he said. It was just a vacant lot when I came back."

So, for four years Damitio, his second wife Janice and his step-children took to rebuilding the Brooklyn Tavern.

"It's original as far as it relates to the way it was when it was burned," he said.

Damitio and Janice, just the fifth owners of the tavern, then took to trying to replace some of the artifacts that were destroyed in the blaze. After several garage sales throughout the area, the couple returned with several treasures, including photos, saws and the bell off a 19th century locomotive.

"We replaced them and probably a little more than we had," Damitio said. But a new building doesn't mean the owner's strayed from his intentions with the tavern -- like shunning as much modernity as he can. The only entertainment in the bar is a radio and a television that usually works, but Damitio said he had to be nagged into buying it.

"I stay away from almost reality," Damitio said. "You don't see any pull tabs and no coin-operated anything." While Brooklyn's only business doesn't have to worry much about competition -- the nearest taverns are nearly 20 miles away -- Damitio said it's more important to him to keep the bar's atmosphere the way it is instead of turning a profit.

"It's a labor of love," he said. "I really like the bar. I can't express how much I love it. "The majority of the time, especially Thursday and Sunday when I've got a six-hour stint up here, it's just a damn fun thing."

And it's that atmosphere that keeps regulars like Caton coming back, as well as attracting many of the young people who live in the area. "I watch a lot of them come in here when they're of age, watched them finish college and go to work," Damitio said. "Sure, teachers watch kids grow up. I'm watching them reach maturity and reach beyond maturity. I feel so good about them."

By Andrea Abney

The Vidette Reporter