“T” is for Tinker

Tinker at Woodstock on the bed of his fabled truck

It’s probably his diversity that is most significant about Carl Tinker West. Without that, he would not have made a name for himself in the music world, in the sound and sight world, in the science world, in the surfing world, across the globe, or in Highlands itself.

Tinker… the quick-minded, brilliant, individualistic Californian who came east and established the internationally known Challenger East surfboard building company, making the unique and highly coveted boards in his well-recognized purple factory on Bay Avenue, a purple building painted after the code enforcement officer issued a summons and a warning to clean up his property.

“So I went out to Walmart, bought five gallons of paint and a spray brush, and I painted the building in a day,” he recalls. He never bothered to explain that his purple paint and the Nightmare before Christmas statue he topped the building with were his way of remaining independent while still obeying the edict to paint his building and adhere to borough regulations.

The stories about Tinker and Bruce Springsteen are legendary yet true. The former government scientist who knew firsthand about spaceships and rockets at March Air Force Base in California was also a wizard at sound production, and was manager for Vini Lopez and his band Steel Mill, the forerunner of the E Street Band where Springsteen was a singer. He recalls Bruce was “smart, quiet, and could write songs.” So Tinker and Vini and his gang made a deal… they could make surfboards in his Highlands shop, write, rehearse and rock and roll. He would continue to repair his cars on the other side of the garage.

Tinker also had New York friends in the business, and through introductions to them helped Bruce launch a career.

As for the rockets and spaceships, Tinker goes into scientific mode with explanations of how, why, where and what actually exists but ends simply with “there’s a lot more out there than anybody knows about. Who are we to think we’re the center of the universe?”

It was in the 1960s that Tinker, for whatever reasons or whims, decided to put his scientific connections with the government on a back burner and turn to learning more about other things in which he was interested.

That his love of music that Tinker brought to the Jersey shore can’t be denied. Summers, he gathered friends and musicians and would-be musicians to Long Branch to offer free concerts on the beach. He established the Highlands Music and Arts Fair in Highlands in 1972 (I think this was at Huddy Park. A band that Jackie France and Charlie Rugg had called Grand Canyon Band played at it), a format that had been so popular at Woodstock and beyond. He provided his talents, his sound and lighting equipment and ability, and his love for keeping people happy to create a brighter spot in the world for many.

Tinker never forgets his friends, another attribute of a man who just as easily enjoys his own solitude, his own warm workshop and factory in that purple building heated by his home-made log-fired stove, complete with temperature controls, oven and miniature range top for making coffee. As an octogenarian, he never forgets friends along the way, some he’s known for a short while, others for a lifetime. He recalls it was Phil Giarmita of the former Alpine Manor that introduced him to Highlands, Atlantic Highlands attorney Pete Locascio who was “a good guy, a square shooter,” and Nina Flannery, the former Highlands borough clerk and administrator who is really “a sharp woman, a good woman.” He remembers Haik Mendes, the Highlands man who owned the Cove in Sea Bright where Tinker docked the sailboat he had bought and repaired in Maine and sailed to Highlands and the Cove.

Their names are intermingled with the famous names, the scientists in California, the friends in the Black House…”you call it the White House,” he chuckles… the historians, the artists.

A non-political figure who is always aware of the latest happening in the country and the world, Tinker will tell you in his own colorful language there are “Republicrats and Democrans. ” He just wants to get things done. But he’s eager to report he’s anti-liberal.

He scoffs at the news stories and arguments in the papers in the 1970s when the builders of Top of the East in Highlands wanted to build twin towers. The one in Highlands was approved months later, the proposed adjacent apartment complex just across the borough line Atlantic Highlands rejected, on the site that is now a Monmouth County Park. “They said there was a fault in that hill underneath,” he recalls, adding, “of course there is, they’re all over. But didn’t they even know that those faults are over rock? That hill is solid.” And as proof, he adds, “there isn’t a single crack in that building up there. It hasn’t moved an inch. And it will still be standing long after you and me.”

Tinker is critical of an educational system that doesn’t teach history…”we’re the only brand of two-footed animal who doesn’t read our own history,” he’ll scoff, “how do you learn if you don’t know what you’ve done before?” But he loves laughter, another attribute he said, that is reserved for monkeys, mankind and hyenas. “It’s good for you,” he adds, with a broad grin.

Tinker has some strong views on women, views dating back to his childhood that are part of his history. He likes them, for sure, but he wouldn’t trust them.

Tinker shares his factory space and heated office in the same building with one of the antique vehicles he’s been working on for decades, if only because he loves to tinker with machines. He is quick to liken the human body to an automobile… the eyes are the headlights, the heart, the engine that pumps the fluid through the body, the rectum, the exhaust. It all simply makes sense, he says quietly with a shrug of his shoulders.