An ode to the under appreciated art of making things work

by Ed Cullen

Art & Culture

July 31, 2026

1:02 AM

Design Man lies recumbent on a chaise longue beneath a beach house on the Alabama coast. He is relaxed, one eye on his book, the other eye turned inward to the mental lab that operates around the clock. The designing brain is ever alert for the need for art, practical work and rescue.

A sound has been banging at Design Man's lab door for ten minutes. He is a slow reader who is trying to be absorbed in Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods without interruption for at least five minutes.

Moore is good, but the intriguing sound has now been identified as that of a tire screaming in a hole of its own making. The acrid smell of burning rubber on a clear, blue-sky day in early spring arises. Someone has stuck his or her vehicle in the abundant sand and is going nowhere fast.

Design Man has the equivalent of a Ph.D. in designing extractions of truck tires from the gumbo ya-ya of Louisiana pine forests. So slick is the gray clay at the bottom of such tire holes, there is no stench of burning rubber, just the high-pitched whine that sings, “The only way this ends is when the axle touches ground.”

No panic. In six months, the ground will have dried. Drop her into low gear and drive right out.

Of course, if people needing to cross rivers had the time and material to build barges, there’d be no need for bridges. This is where Design Man and, of course, Design Woman come in. For eons, Design Woman labored in the shadow of significant others who were either not around when design was needed or couldn’t design a tent peg from an already sharpened tree branch.

It is Design Man who answers the call of the truck stuck behind the house next door. The situation: A young Mexican man has tried to back up a Big Box Store truck of twelve wheels after delivering a refrigerator. The truck’s rear four tires are prisoners of the sand. The driver speaks no English, but he smiles and is instantly likeable. His partner speaks English with no accent. He acknowledges Design Man’s observation that the truck is stuck good.

Sweating like a man whose truck is struck, the driver’s mate allows that the sun is dropping and that he and his partner have three more deliveries to make. Design Man seizes the opening.

“Por favor,” Design Man says, exhausting his Spanish. “Put two long boards BEHIND the rear wheels. Back onto the boards and out of the hole. Then, place smaller boards in front of the rear wheels. Move forward slowly until the wheels gain traction. Give her the gas slowly, and don’t stop.”

Moses’s parting of the Red Sea has gotten more ink than the work of Design Man, but those who’ve benefited from his designs hold him in high, if anonymous, regard.

The delivery men roar off in their freed truck, waving from either side of the cab. The stuck site looks like a small wooden building has exploded—rough boards scattered where beach houses are going up, as though hurricanes and the lending rate are no consideration.

The next morning, Design Man, basking in the glow, has turned his attention to designing a windsock to withstand the gale force winds his previous windsock did not. In the afternoon, he works on a door stop that will arrest the wind’s slamming of the shed door under the house. Taking a break, he observes a perfect hole drilled into the deck that just fits a bolt fixed to the bottom of the shed door.

Design Man raises an Ultra (2.6 carbs and 95 cals) to the designer of the shed door’s deck bolt. The beer is designed to shrink the belly, sip after satisfying sip. Successful designers work hand in hand with master marketers.