In this house, they found peace. The other frenetic world that entwined them was far, far away. Here, they discovered harmony with life. Over the years, the family grew with children designing rapturous memories of life in Tucson. This Beatles brood surrendered to the most romantic emotion of all. They wanted to live forever in concord with one another in this house up Redington Road.
Paul and Linda McCartney bought the long-vacant two-story Tucson ranch house with 151-acres of arid solitude in 1979. It gave their life balance with equilibrium to stabilize from the boisterous outside world of Beatledom. And it became Sir Paul and Lady McCartney's Camelot. Few knew of its existence. Shrouded in Mother Nature's desert glory, their four children grew up here visiting in the spring and fall months of the years. It is the tin roof, stucco home where 56-year-old Linda Louise McCartney, under a Tucson velvet, starry night in the spring of 1998, lost her struggle with cancer. Paul and the four children were there as their life in Camelot ended.
Recently, a fellow named Tom Tompkins contacted me. He is a former Tucsonan who now lives in Colorado. Tompkins knows more about the Redington Road ranch house on the far northeast side of the Old Pueblo than perhaps the McCartney's. Tompkins was the remodeling contractor McCartney hired to restore the old house. Interestingly, the Pima County records on the property owners are still officially sealed to the public.
This is Tom Tompkins' story.
It was 1982 when Paul's Tucson attorney S. Leonard Scheff drove me out to the edge of the Tucson valley. This would be my first look at renovating the old adobe and pole-frame ranch house that had belonged to the Ellinwoods, a pioneering Tucson newspaper family. (The Ellinwoods owned the Arizona Daily Star for 35 years.) Up to the Y where Redington Road veered from Tanque Verde, the attorney pounded me on the need for security. I would have to keep every worker in the dark while I staged the remodeling project.
When attorney Scheff, who is now retired, turned onto Redington Road, he suddenly gushed, "I can't keep a secret like this! The job is for Paul McCartney!" (Scheff was the attorney for Linda McCartney's Tucson divorce in June 1965.)
The secret was safe with me. Paul visited when I started remodeling the ranch house. I remember how he loved the weathered door on the west side of the house. The sun, wind, and rain had eroded furrows a quarter-inch deep in the wood. The same weekend Paul visited, the well-meaning caretaker belt sanded the door. Paul was a little upset, while everyone around him was hugely upset for Paul. The style we were striving for was Early Cowboy. What one architect had envisioned as a $2 million-dollar Swiss chalet came in at $125,000 according to my good faith estimate, and we kept the job under the budget. We made the back porch rail out of galvanized pipes embedded in concrete and all-put-together with elbows and tees. Bunkhouse treatment went best with the old ranch.
Paul made a point of meeting with me, and not to discuss the job, but to talk about life. The attorney told me Paul's father had been a working man and that Paul admired people who did things with their hands. Paul was as relaxed as I was nervous when he approached me in the front yard fenced with Oleander.
I asked Paul if he had trouble with people invading his privacy. He thought for a minute, and then he said, "Well, there is one man who lives up the road who shows up sometimes. But he needs loveβ like everyone."
There was a problem with one person in the job's chain of command who was supposed to get the building permitβ and hadn't. Paul was returningβ with Linda and the familyβ in early March when the smell of the cactus flower was on the breeze. We still had trenches saw cut in the floors for new plumbing by mid-February, and most of the walls were torn open for new electrical, none of which could be covered without a building inspection. This was my first job after getting my general contractor's license. While Tucson was the wild west and people often did things without permits, I was loath to try to get the new electrical service connected without a green tag. Everything would devolve from that failure, and I would be banned from the business. I needed sleep but couldn't.
It wasn't Paul doing it to me, but it is what happens when you work for the rich and famous. Overwhelmed with indignation, I complained to the attorney. And he responded, "The hammer's gonna fall." We felt the yank all down the chain. But by the time we could call for an inspection, Paul was already on his way. The cacti were in full bloom.
Paul offered a suggestion: "Why don't we rent a house in the neighborhood?" And they did, just down Redington Road from their ranch house under reconstruction.
Next month in Saddlebag Notes, we will learn how Tom Tomkins's crew is progressing with the McCartney family's house in the spring of 1983.
Fredrick Thomas Tompkins was born in Tucson, where he grew up building treehouses and swam on the Lighthouse Y team. After college, he lived in meditation communities in New York, Texas, and Colorado. Tom has been a builder and artisan remodeler for fifty years. In 2019, he received his degree in Writing from Colorado Mesa University located in Grand Junction, Colorado, where he now resides.
Award-winning writer Jerry Wilkerson lives in SaddleBrooke. He is a former press secretary for two U.S. Congressmen and a prior WBBM Chicago CBS Newsradio and Chicago Daily News correspondent. Wilkerson is a retired police commissioner and Navy veteran. Email: franchise@att.net.
