TUCKER TALES: Tall tales or the truth? We’re betting the truth
from Lyle Atwood of Bradford who knew not just infamous Tucker
owner George McKinney but also crime fighter Eliot Ness. He also
tells us he was 3 years old when he first got involved in the oil
business. He is now 88 years old.

Lyle lived in Salamanca, N.Y., and worked for West End Brewing
of Utica, N.Y., traveling throughout the region distributing Utica
Club beer.

On one of his jaunts, he headed to Coudersport where he was
going to be staying at the Crittenden Hotel.

It was there he encountered George McKinney, who was the
regional Tucker distributor, who introduced him to Eliot Ness, who
was then in the process of writing “The Untouchables,” a book and
later movie about Ness’ battles with organized crime, in general,
and Al Capone, in particular.

Ness, readers may recall, once lived in Coudersport after his
retirement from the federal job.

This was obviously some time after Prohibition, the force that
fueled organized crime’s involvement in illicit booze, since Lyle’s
product was legal by that time.

In any case, Lyle tells us he knew Ness pretty well and called
him “a hell of a nice guy.”

But we digress. Lyle tells us he never drove McKinney’s Tucker
preferring a Studebaker. Still, he believes the relic is buried on
the McKinney farm. Incidentally, that farm had belonged to Grace
Emery of Bradford and, according to Lyle, she helped the McKinneys
out in other financial ways, too.

Lyle tells us he first went to work in the oilfields with his
dad who was employed by South Penn Oil Co. His stint included work
at the legendary Music Mountain.

NEW FUEL: Alvan H. Johnson dropped us a line about another car
the other day and it ties in  nicely with the tale about Eliot
Ness: “One good thing about the model T Ford was that Mr. Ford
built his automobile with two kinds of fuel in mind — one was
gasoline, at the time a ‘waste’ fuel and ethanol , now a viable
fuel. Back in the day, my great-grandfather’s pals had a still back
in the woods, and during the war they ran their ‘T’s on it and it
worked just fine.”