After his business days in Alderson were over, Bill “Moochie” Tyler moved to Pence Springs, He operated a tavern across the road from the “Riverside Inn that  Ashby  Berkley had made into a well known “gourmet “ eatery.  

On a Saturday night in 1948, Jim Cook, Wally Callahan, Bill Bryant and I had gone to Hinton to see Pat Shires play football, since Alderson played their games Fridays, we had Saturday off.  

We were in Jim’s car, (Jim’s dad was Fleet Cook who managed the local CJ’s store and they always had a new car)!  After the post-game activities while on the way back to Alderson, we decided to stop in Moochie’s, someone in the car wanted cigarettes or perhaps we thought there was a chance Mooch would sell us some beer.  

He would not, even though the place was as empty as my pockets.  So we politely thanked him and started to leave. There was a large cast-iron stove in the middle of the room, the stove-pipe ran up and then, was horizontally suspended by wires hung from the ceiling, across the room and into a chimney at the far end.  

Now we are talking about four finely honed athletes, agile and graceful and quick as a mongoose, also maybe just a little tiddly, (as my Aunt Mim used to say!  One of us, and I really never knew which one, apparently kicked a leg or a brick, which must have been precariously balancing one corner of the stove.  The stove fell on its side and every damn joint of the stove-pipe came apart and fell to the floor scattering black soot everywhere!   

We were completely at a loss, we didn’t know what to do, but digging deep into out jeans we came up with about $13.00 which we gave to Mr. Tyler, as he was now known to us, with our heart-felt apology, Mr. Tyler surveyed the damage, took the money from our eager hands, and then reached into his pocket and pulled out the biggest revolver I had ever seen. We were heading for the door, when he said, “thanks for the money boys, but that won’t feed the Bulldog”!