The answer was no. Period.
Gary and Kristy Cordis were disheartened. Kristy's father, Charlo rancher Vern Roylance, had been diagnosed with cancer. They wanted to move back to Kristy's hometown, where Gary could still operate his independent insurance agency and Kristy - the only daughter among seven children - could be close to her dad.
A few days later, Lenora Liberty wrote them a letter.
“She said the bar was still not for sale to anyone else, but it would be for Kristy,” Gary says. “She said she wouldn't sell if it wasn't a win-win-win situation - she could get the price she needed out of it, she could sell it at a price we could afford, and the bar would remain an important part of the community. It was one of the greatest letters I've ever read.”
But so much happened after that.
The state of Montana and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes engaged in a months-long stare-down over a gaming compact for the Flathead Indian Reservation that stalled the sale. The bar was worth one price if it could continue to offer gambling, and an entirely different one if it couldn't.
While that was going on, two more things occurred.
On Kristy's birthday last July 13, Vern Roylance died.
“We thought he had a few years when he was diagnosed,” Gary says, “but the cancer advanced more rapidly than anyone expected.”
Then on Nov. 12, Kristy's 53-year-old brother Rob Roylance - the principal manager of the family ranch - had a heart attack and died.
Now the Cordises were commuting from Missoula to Charlo several days a week to help brother John Roylance run the 450-head cattle operation, while continuing to work their other jobs - Gary's insurance agency and the Frenchtown Club that Kristy managed.
Now, it was imperative that they move to Charlo.
Kristy used to ride into town with her father, when he'd haul grain, and they always stopped at Tiny's Tavern, where Adrian “Tiny” Browne would set a bottle of Orange Crush in front of the little girl.
Tiny was anything but - 6-foot-7 and 300 pounds - and you were never sure whether he was operating a bar or a museum that served alcohol.
He collected coins, beer bottles, Jim Beam decanters, arrowheads. He had pictures of Hitler, the original bill of sale for a slave and an altar from a church.
“He had coins from before Christ,” says Edna Esterby, who managed the bar for Celeste Fagan, Tiny's sister, who took it over after he died in 1977. “He was known as the bank of Charlo. Tiny always carried a lot of money in his pocket and if you needed to cash a check, you went to Tiny.”
If you needed extra large clothes, he could help out, too. During Spirit Week at Charlo High School one year, when students dressed up in different themes each day, Alisa Smith and her friend Terri Wamsley borrowed a pair of Tiny's old coveralls for “twins day.”
Smith climbed in one pants leg. Wamsley got in the other, and the two girls wore one pair of Tiny's giant coveralls.
Smith - who manages the competition down the street, the Branding Iron - says Tiny's eclectic collection was amazing. He displayed it along the walls of the basement tavern.
When a later owner sold or returned to original donors all the items, “I bawled,” Smith says.
The place opened in 1946 as the Char-Mo Hotel and Tiny's Blind Pig Tavern - the rumor, Esterby says, was the tavern name came from a brothel in Tiny's past - and the bar/museum was originally located in the building's basement.
The bar closed for nine years before Liberty revived it. She moved the bar upstairs, the apartments downstairs, and when she sold to the Cordises, she passed on the last remnants of Tiny's collecting habits - dozens of scrapbooks into which he pasted the oddest assortment of thousands of newspaper clippings, political campaign paraphernalia, Christmas cards and other items.
Walt Disney's obituary Š a map of Liberia Š an article about Queen Juliana snubbing a Dutch royal wedding Š a picture (from 1966) of Lusius D. Amerson of Macon County, Ala., the first black person elected sheriff in the South Š political fliers for Montana Democratic candidates such as Roland Renne, who lost the 1964 race for governor Š a story about Lynda Bird Johnson ending her engagement.
If it caught Tiny's interest, he saved it.
Gary and Kristy Cordis were out feeding cattle at 6:30 a.m. Thursday. By 11, she was starting her eight-hour shift at Tiny's, which the couple took over on April 11.
“It's been a little busy,” she admits.
Rob was the third of her six brothers she's lost, and the added duties at the ranch keep them hopping, but she says it's good to be home, even if the homecoming was precipitated by tragedy.
“This wasn't anything we thought about until Dad got sick,” Kristy says.
Tiny's was the first bar she worked in, back in 1986, and she expects it will be the last, too.
She didn't get to move home to Charlo before her father died, but on July 3 - 10 days before his death - Vern Roylance worked his last day on the ranch.
“We hadn't told anybody what we were trying to do,” Gary says. “But I sat Vern down and told him Kristy was buying Tiny's. He smiled, he thought it was great.”
And now, once again, Tiny's Tavern is not for sale.
Period.
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at (406) 319-2117 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com
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June Richardson wrote on Dec 1, 2008 5:55 AM: