WRITE ON: AMERICAN INGENUITY

By PETER S. FERRARA<br>Record Columnist

Sat, May 17 2008

— STEARNS — Where are all the smart people hiding?
With a $2 trillion war in Iraq, the cost of which may be eclipsed by the multi-trillion dollar real estate bubble that, in turn, is eclipsed by a $10 trillion national debt, you may wonder.
Well they may not be in Washington or Frankfort, but I have found several in McCreary County. One in particular is an unassuming fellow named Ray McCullough.
Ray was born in Whitley City in 1942. Like many of his peers, he left school after eighth grade to get a job and help support his family. He went to Cincinnati where he worked in a foundry. Then he came back to McCreary County and had jobs at Cumberland Falls, Kidd’s Chevrolet, and Murphy’s Furniture among others. Eventually, he was able to purchase and owner-operate his own trucking service.
For 32 years, Ray had a series of trucks. His last one was a “377 Peterbilt” with a sleeper on it. Ray hauled logs out to ZAK Limited, where they made barrels. He retired from trucking in 2005.
But if you ask Ray where he learned to take a 1981 Honda 750cc motorcycle and fuse it with a 1972 Volkswagen transaxle to create a three-wheel motorcycle, he will tell you that he had no formal training at all. All he had was his native intelligence and common sense. It was enough.
“I just built it to see if I could,” he said modestly when I visited him at his home in Whitley City.
He took me to the garage where this fierce looking machine is kept, turned the ignition, and the beast jumped to life without so much as a sputter or a cough. Ray had made or found and fitted together every part of this hot-looking street-legal machine. He had cut up a giant truck fender to fabricate much of the body of the three-wheeler some people call a “trike.”
Ray just seemed to know how all the different systems worked to make engines turn and vehicles go—from trucks and tractors to trikes. When I lift the hood of my car, I gaze uncertainly into a mysterious world of hoses, pipes, and wires and, beyond a few simple details, I am totally ignorant of what the heck is going on under there. But Ray knows. He also has a knowledge of plumbing, electricity, and general construction that is a thousand times greater than my own.
Ray learned all these things on his own. That makes him an “Auto-Didact,” which is someone who has taught themselves most of what they know. Abraham Lincoln was one. Benjamin Franklin was another.
The history of good old American “Yankee Ingenuity” has shown where many of the great ideas came from and continue to originate even to today. Color television, the videocassette recorder and player, medical breakthroughs in pharmaceuticals, and most modern computing technology innovation came from right here in America. We are tinkerers by nature and use our imaginations in ways that other folks don’t.
Where the Ray McCullough’s come from is a mystery to me. But Ray will tell you that a lot of his character has been shaped through his being a member of the Masonic Order for over 26 years.
“Being a Mason has helped me become a better person and has given me a broad view of life. One thing I am sort of proud of is that in all those 26 years, I have only missed three meetings at the Lodge.”
Ray is a multi-time past Master of Greenwood Masonic Lodge No. 903. He’s been a member of Taylor Ridge Baptist Church for over 30 years. He and his wife Wanda have been married for 47 years. They have two children, five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
Ray is what my mother would have called a “sensible man.”
Now if somebody asks me where the smart people are hiding, I can tell them that one of them lives out on Sand Hill Road. I just wish that folks like Ray were running this country. I really do. If the “Ray’s” were only in charge, I think things would purr along as smoothly as Ray’s amazing, home-built trike does.
Look at that machine! Ain’t it a beauty?

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