Rabbit Box Blog

I read recently that Volkswagen is resurrecting the Scout name, and it reminded me of Uncle Ray. Sounds a little odd, but here’s why:

In case you didn’t know Ray Shelton, he was a born engineer, although he never got the chance to get a degree. On second thought, a degree might have just held him back. At his memorial service, the plant engineer he worked with talked about how Ray had to educate him in how to run a machine shop.

One of my earliest memories of Ray was in Grandpa Nelson’s barn, when Ray and Leroy were working on an old car (and maybe William, my memory is vague on that). Parts were strewn all over the place, as they worked on various subassemblies of the motor, transmission, and other pieces. They always seemed to be working on something, whenever I went to visit.

“Throw me a 1/2 inch wrench over here,” said Leroy at one point. From the other side of the barn, Ray glanced at what Leroy was working on and said, “That looks like a 5/8s to me,” as he tossed over the wrench. 

“Nah, it’s a half,” retorted Leroy. As the baby brother, he didn’t like Ray contradicting him.

Leroy caught the wrench and put it on the bolt.

“Oh, yeah, you’re right,” he said, as he loosened the 5/8″ bolt.

Ray had unusual mechanical abilities. He could look at something and figure out exactly how it was made, and whether it was any good. We used to joke that if he needed a part for something he was working on, he could go make one in his shop. If he didn’t have the tools to make the part, he could make those, too.

After high school, Ray went to work with Uncle Harold in his machine shop in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Harold had a lot of the same mechanical abilities, as did the other brothers. Leroy worked as an auto mechanic and built race cars (and drove them, as his many trophies showed). Jack worked on the Redstone rockets at Huntsville, Alabama, along with other technical jobs. William worked as a pipe-fitter.  Unfortunately, strong mechanical ability is a trait that did not get passed to me in my share of the family’s DNA. Fortunately, lots of my cousins fared better in that regard.

After Ray had married and started a family, he came over to our house to show off his new car—an International Harvester Scout. I’m a little vague on the details or the date, but based on pictures on the Internet, I think it was a model 800, which was produced between 1965 and 1968. Knowing Ray, he chose it because he thought it was better built than the competing cars, the Willys Jeep and Ford Bronco.

I remember he also had a Studebaker at one time, and also a series of more common brands like Plymouth and Ford. Ray tended to trade cars more often than Dad or other family members did. Mom says he bought cars he could fix up and sell for a profit.

Now for the Volkswagen part of my memory. One of the few cars Ray ever bought new, maybe the only one, was a red Volkswagen Beetle. Aunt Jane laughed when she told us about how he bought it.

He was standing beside the car as the salesman showed off its features, naturally focusing on the elements that would be interesting to the average buyer—paint, shiny hubcaps, interior, upholstery, etc. Suddenly, without a word, Ray dropped to the ground and disappeared under the car.

“Are you all right?” yelled the salesman. Ray didn’t answer. Finally, he crawled out from under the car and stood up.

He had been checking the parts of the car that were of interest to him. How well was it engineered? Was it assembled correctly? How did they mount that air-cooled engine in the back and connect it to the wheels?

Apparently he liked what he saw, because he bought the car on the spot.

As I remember it, the Bug was one of his favorite cars. Soon after he got it, he took it on a road trip to the Midwest. He bragged that his mileage was far better than VW claimed, because he figured out he could pull in behind an 18-wheeler, shift into neutral, and draft for miles before a hill would make him shift back into gear and use the engine. I’ll admit I never saw him do this, but he wasn’t known to tell tall tales.