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11/02/2022 08:30 AMRobert Tinari received the nickname of “Tippy” at a very young age. He got it from his friends after a game of chicken fighting, when being knocked down by his opponent, falling on his bottom and spinning like a top.
“They started calling me ‘Topser,’ then went to ‘Tip-Top,’ then wound up ‘Tippy,” he says.
But, for the most part, that was the last time Robert fell down. Now, at 89, Robert is East Haven’s oldest electrician.
“My father was my teacher. He taught me everything I know. I never had a better teacher. I worked with him for 24 years,” Robert says. “I started when I was about 14 years old. Every summer I had off from East Haven High School I’d go to work with him. I never had a summer off like the other kids. When I graduated in 1950, I started working full-time.”
Before striking out on his own in 1966, Robert worked for his father Sal at Tinari Electric. He was charged with helping set up the town’s Christmas lights and working in the commercial space in East Haven as the electricians for nearly every store. They also worked on the Army air base, Bradley Field, now Bradley International Airport, during World War II from 1943 to 1944.
Robert says he was sometimes confused about his position as his dad’s right-hand man, but found being an electrician was a financially sound occupation.
“I even said to him, ‘Dad, what am I doing here?’ [He responded], ‘Look, I just want you to watch me and hand me my tools.’ I was getting $5 a week. Then I graduated from high school; I was getting $85 a week,” Robert says. “And when I got married I was making $113 a week.”
Robert worked for the family business until becoming a self-employed electrician following his father's retirement, and he has continued to work exclusively for residential properties in the town he has lived his entire life. He says he finds that the independence that comes from being a self-employed electrician was the best situation when it came to his work. He became accustomed to working by himself without his father’s assistance when Sal was busy with the still-active Sal Tinari Biddy Basketball league he started in 1954.
“I always liked to work alone. I didn’t need help at the time. I figured if I did the work and something went wrong, it was me who did it. I couldn’t trust anybody. A lot of guys, I don't know how they sleep at night,” says Robert.
If there’s one part of his job he likes in particular, it’s wiring new houses, and seeing the process from starting to finish. According to him, it’s a process you have to enjoy, along with the job as a whole, whilst understanding that the danger that comes along with the territory of being an electrician is not for everyone.
“You’re working with wire and electricity, so you have to like it. You can’t be scared of it. You got to know what you’re doing, how to handle it, when to handle it,” Robert says. “I have a few jolts now and then, but that’s OK. I never really got a real jolt. Maybe a little tingle. If you’re careful and handle one [wire] at a time, you’re OK. You jump off quick, you don’t hold on.”
Outside of his life’s work, Robert says he enjoyed playing baseball, golf, and basketball, having played basketball on his father’s team and in high school. But his biggest hobby. he says, is gambling — especially video poker. He says he was never interested in table games such as blackjack
“They give you a headache.”
Instead, he prefers to try and beat the machine at its own game and win some money.
While he did go to a few Yankee games, until recently, his preferred stop in the New York metropolitan area was Atlantic City, where he could count on his luck in the casinos and enjoy the boardwalk, personal luxuries he could not find in the Big Apple or even at home.
“The thing with Atlantic City is you’ve more things to do there. You’re not hemmed in like you are here. With Foxwoods, they call them ‘resorts,’ but what do they got? Nothing. In Atlantic City, you’ve got the boardwalk, the different casinos, you can lay on the beach. I went because you get free rooms, I had a host who got me everything I wanted. He still calls me! I’m satisfied over here now”
As an electrician, Robert has never planned on retiring from his profession and knew from the beginning that whatever occupation a person picks, they will stick with it according to the word of their parents.
“The old timers, you gotta do what they say, whether you like it or not. You had no choice, You started working and you keep working. I’m still working now! I’ve made a living all my life.”