Letter to Robert McCulloch

What's the connection between a bridge of the river Thames, Chainsaws and scaling a business?

This an extract from the book Letters to Dead People, by Ivor Share and Henry Nash, which explores our history through a series of letters send back in time! The complete book is available at Amazon, Apple Books, as well as all bookstores worldwide. See www.letterstodeadpeople.com for more details.

Transcript

Targeted Delivery Date: Aug 1974

Robert P. McCulloch

℅ Thunderbird Country Club

Palm Springs

California

United States of America

Dear Bob,

It is not often I get to write to someone who has had such a varied career. It seems to me that your early working years in California and Wisconsin, during the 1930s and 1940s, were all about engines. It didn’t matter what they powered - airplane, boat, lawnmower - if it ran off gasoline and made a nice noise, you were all over it. Maybe this was your ancestry showing through, given that your grandfather was a prolific implementor of a number of the electrical and power inventions of Thomas Edison.

While a number of your contemporaries were perhaps ahead of you in some of the markets, for example Briggs & Stratton for lawnmowers and Ralph Evinrude in boats, you spotted a new niche opportunity for your engines. Chainsaws! Now, I’m not really sure why you thought that arming every redneck around with an engine on a stick connected to a chain was a good idea, but you rapidly built a business out of it. Trees were felled at a prodigious rate, almost as fast as the hospitals could treat the self-inflicted wounds. As an aside, did you ever go wandering through the woods, your trusted McCulloch 3-25 in hand, and say to yourself “You know, I feel like a lumberjack, and I’m alright” (or words to that effect)? I just had to ask. You will be pleased to hear that your chainsaws are still in use today, sold under the Husqvarna brand.

What to do with all the wealth that your growing business was generating? I suspect most people would just stash it away - but not you. As well as starting a car business (Paxton Automotive) which built a car, along with components like superchargers for the industry, you had much bigger plans - to build a city! So in 1963 you made the largest ever land purchase in Arizona of some 26 square miles in a place called Lake Havasu, whose only claim to fame to date had been the location of a World War II army base. As well as building several manufacturing plants to churn out more chainsaws, you started to lay out the city itself. Sure, you had nice wide streets, malls, schools etc. - but you wanted something to make your city famous. So, you settled on a bridge over the river that divided the newly minted Lake Havasu City. Rather than build it, you decided to buy one! One of ours, actually - London Bridge to be precise, for around $2.4m. You had it broken down into blocks, shipped around the world to California and then trucked to Arizona where it was rebuilt. What a fantastic grand opening that was in 1971, with dignitaries galore. Even the Mayor of London came along - mainly, I suspect, because he refused to believe such a ridiculous escapade unless he saw it with his own eyes. Today, the bridge holds the world record of being the largest antique, presumably because it is still classified as being a mobile object! I don’t know if you were amused or annoyed to hear the urban myth grow up that you actually bought the wrong bridge, and had intended to buy Tower Bridge. While this made a great story, we both know that this simply wasn’t true.

Even with the bridge, you weren’t done. In the last few years you have built your first airplane, a kind of blend of airplane and helicopter, and are busy testing it. As ever, you are dreaming big - and plan to market it so you can enable an “airplane in every garage in America”. I have to warn you, that’s a tough gig. For reference, there’s the guy called Steve over in what has recently become known as Silicon Valley, who is mulling on starting a company that will attempt to put a computer into every home in America. This is going to take the best part of thirty years, so good luck with the airplane idea.

Finally, I don’t know which of the various aspects of your career you are most proud? While it is probably your technical achievements, it may also be that you always had time to act the prankster with your grandchildren. Well, I’ll let you into a secret that it is for that bridge you will be most remembered. What an inspired and audacious idea! But then again, who knew that the man who bought London Bridge also invented the chainsaw?

Yours sincerely,

Timothy Shift