The McCartney family was anxious to complete their ranch house up Redington Road renovation project in early 1983. The house still needed much work and could not be occupied yet. They found a neighborβs home for rent down the road from them and moved in so Tom Tomkins and his construction crew could continue their work. Here's Tom's story.
Houses on Redington Road were a half-mile apart in 1983. I was invited to the rental house for a meeting that never materialized. Just as I walked through the front door, Paul's four-year-old son took a trampoline bounce off the couch and landed on a glass coffee tableβ thankfully with safety glass an inch-and-a-half thick. The nanny looked too jetlagged to give the boy one more shocked look. The kids ran circles around her.
Linda McCartney imperiously wagged her pointer finger up and down in my direction, "Hey Jerry, Jim, Carl, whatever your name isβ βher playful self-parody expanded my consciousnessβ "they called and said the meeting's off." I was relieved. I liked Linda and wanted to bounce on the couch and laugh. I had never met such a high-energy family. Paul and Linda were getting ready to take their jeep to the supermarket. One supermarket sighting and all the security I enforced with my crew would be blown.
The link in the chain which was responsible for picking the light fixtures never did. To get the final inspection passed, we put cheap porcelain bulb holders with oversized light bulbs on every electrical box in the houseβ which was genuinely Early Cowboy. A year later, I returned to the job site to match a kind of paisley stucco texture in the kitchen that the plaster crew had never mastered, and I realized nobody had bothered to change out the light fixtures. Paul was pleased with my job and was pleased with simplicityβ for which I've always respected him.
I later heard from Paul's attorney that somebody down the road went past the no-trespassing signs at the locked gate right up to Paul's front door and knocked.
Paul said, "I wish you would not just come to my door like this. Did you see the signs?"
"I just want to rap about sound systems," the guy replied.
"No, I think you should want to go."
"Not compare notes?"
"Well, look, I'm just very busy getting my family moved in. You don't seem like a bad fellow, but you do understand, don't you?"
At this point in the telling, I felt the stranger must have exhausted Paul's patience, and I thought the hammer was going to fall.
Then, Paul brightened and said," You know, they wired speakers in every room, and nowβ I have my console hereβ I need to hook it all up. Can you help?"
"Oh man, I'd love to."
"Come on inside," Paul graciously replied.
Tom Tomkins admits he was shocked when he found out he would be remodeling Paul McCartney's home in Tucson back in 1983. "I stepped out of attorney Scheff's car and faced the deserted house. My heart sank as I thought I would have to lay off my two best friends, a hippie musician, and a meditating veteran, because they wouldn't be nearly professional enough considering their new apprenticeship. I have never lived this down."
Tomkins says that "the building's pole structure on the west end must have been initially a carriage house. That could indicate the adobe house was built in the 1890s during horse-and-buggy times. The carriage house conversion to a living room probably took place mid-century in the 1900"s, judging by the coral-colored bath tile of the 1950s. The working, original fireplace set the tone for our Early Cowboy decor."
According to Tomkins, "The original adobe house was less than 1,000-square-feet. The carriage house converted to a living room added another 400-square-feet. The sleeping loft we made in the attic above the living room added 200 more square-feet. If the east porch got enclosed, that would be another 150-square-feet, but I think we just re-screened it."
Tom's sister, Caroline Tompkins still lives in Tucson. "I went to the house in the spring of 1960 for a school barbeque with my classmates hosted by one of the Ellinwoods kids. Nobody from town had ever been that far out east of Tucson. It was way out in the desert.β
"My brother told me when he was working at the home; people would meet him in the morning on the road in front of the gate. They wanted to see the construction work. I think they had a perception that the house belonged to someone important."
The Tucson attorney representing the McCartney family, Leonard Scheff, still lives in the Old Pueblo and is retired. When asked about Paul and Linda's purchase of the home, his response was, "What house on Redington Road? I can't comment on the sale of the house, but I do remember it was vacant for many years."
Paul McCartneyβs connection with Tucson was through his wife, Linda Eastman. She attended the University of Arizona, where she began her prolific photography career. Linda was enamored with the desert beauty and tranquility of life. It always felt like home to her.
McCartney's company still pays the taxes on the property, and a caretaker maintains the buildings, including a horse barn, and swimming pool. The gate on Redington Road always remains locked. The McCartney brood enjoyed their hideaway entirely off the world grid for 15-years.
Those in Tucson who fortunately saw or met the McCartney family during their visits have much to tell even today. Paul and Linda were always kind and generous of their time with people at Tucson stores and restaurants. And the remarkably considerate neighbors who lived near the Beatle and his menage's old Tucson ranch house up Redington Road have personal experiences and memories they shall never forget. A fterall, they knew Paul by his first name, that British fellow who had a band.
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.
