Eccentric craftsman, Carey Hurlstone, spends his days carving black coral he collected in the early 80’s and reading books in his swinging hammock.

A profile of Carey Hurlstone

By Trent Jacobs
trent@caymannetnews.com 

The Cayman Islands have always stood out in the Caribbean and amongst other overseas dependencies for many reasons. Many older Caymanians remember a simpler time and a far quieter life, an era did not include morning rush hours, jet planes flying in at all hours of the night or bikini-clad cruisers wandering aimlessly through downtown.

But there is at least one man who, laying in his hammock, staring out into the cobalt sea that can say he’s seen it all and made it back alive to tell the tale. Carey Hurlstone, owner of the Black Coral Clinic on South Sound Road, and best known to his many friends as ‘Dr Carey’ left the island in the early ‘50s to board a super-tanker aptly named The Phoenix which took him to California.

Leaving Cayman behind for America at age 18, Dr Carey would eventually criss-cross the country. And hearing it from him, his life may seem almost too far-fetched to believe, if it weren’t for his tapestry of tattoos and peculiar yet impressive, collection of artifacts that festoon his garage-turned-workshop that he calls the Bikini House, for reasons which will be revealed later.

The Black Coral Clinic is ranked as one of the top tourist draws in the Cayman Islands, but in fact the true attraction is Dr Carey himself. A natural-born craftsman, he began simple woodcarvings as a young boy in the 1940s when Cayman was a mere spec on the map and people still took catboats to work.

Today the Doc spends his days meticulously etching images of pirate ships and scuba divers into glass scrimshaws, and carving jewelry out of black coral which he sells for modest prices. Dr Carey and some friends he met from Texas took to the waters off South Sound over two decades ago (well before the reefs were legally protected) and collected a massive stock pile of this precious coral which will likely last longer than the good Doc himself. He claims to be the only one on the Island that hand-carves Cayman black coral, saying that all the black coral jewellery and sculpture sold in George Town’s high-end retail shops are imported from Southeast Asia.

But even his exceptional hand-crafted glass work, coral carvings, his home made knives can not outshine Dr Carey’s travels and the nearly four years he spent with the most infamous “Motorcycle Club” in the world. Remaining true to the motorcycle club’s code of silence, Dr Carey wouldn’t say the name of this club out loud. But their name became notorious after the famous free Rolling Stones concert in Altamont, California, marred by the murder of an 18-year-old by the riders.

“I rode with the worst, or the best, for three years and eight months. I was in the main chapter in Oakland, California. You could say I lived a life that not many people could even dream up.”

Dr Carey’s former motorcycle club had been hired to provide stage security by the Rolling Stones, and reportedly were paid $500 dollars and a case of beer. But when the technical delays with the concert made the crowd of nearly 300,000 restless, the club members, using pool cues and their bikes to hold off the hoard of young people, were blamed for inciting the violence that many say ended the “Peace Generation.”

Dr Carey chose to run away from the nefarious group of outlaws after the incident and ended up in Texas where he met a cowgirl and championship barrel racer whom he eventually married. In Texas he became a true Cayman Cowboy, and still has several pairs of perfectly polished boots that would be the envy of any bull rider, complete with silver spurs. And hanging over his desk, you can still find his leather gun belt and holster. He claims to keep his “shooting iron” in a safe place.

He also has a collection of 86,977 marbles, all given to him by people from all over the world. He boasts that he may have the largest collection of marbles on Earth. Amongst his most precious specimens are five uranium-laden radioactive marbles, which glow an eerie green and orange when put under a black light. He says not to worry because the seal on the jar is made of lead. But…ah…the jar is just made of glass?

A woman once offered him, he says, thousands dollars for a single marble. The woman, from Canada who herself was a marble collector, asked to see his favourite jar and discovered the rare item.
“And when she got to this marble she said, ‘Where do you keep this marble’ and I said, ‘Right where you found it in this jug.’ Then she told me I needed to go put this marble in a safety deposit box, downtown,” he said.

The rare marble was crafted in the early 1900’s by a Norwegian immigrant in Virginia who, upon discovering a meteor on his land made just a few hundred marbles, each with a tiny piece of the meteorite inside. Inspired by others, Dr Carey has since made a few of his own marbles out of Cayman Mahogany and Ironwood.

Amongst some of his more intriguing collections, one which stands out the most, is the neatly arranged women’s bathing suits and undergarments that are pinned to the ceiling. Voluntarily provided by both visiting tourists and locals, a sign in his workshop reads: “This is nothing rude or bad, just a thong collection.” In his ongoing effort to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, Dr Carey says he only needs 80 more of the lace underwear by December to gain entry into the history books.

Over the years he has hobnobbed with such disparate people as a Noble Peace Prize winner and First Amendment advocate/notorious publisher of Hustler Magazine, Larry Flynt.

And, thanks to Hurricane Ivan, his motorcycle days ended with a flooded bike. But as one of his many hand-painted signs reads: “Blessed is he that expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed.”

And so it came to pass that the young lad from Cayman, who left the Island a half century ago to ride across America atop a Harley Davidson, with some of the scariest characters on the planet, would eventually come home to spend the rest of his sun-dappled days collecting marbles and feeding corn to chickens chirping on his doorstep.