There are things and places that are the butt of jokes. Cleveland for instance can't stop being the place that monsters devour. At least for people who saw monster movies on their TV sets in the 1950s.
Fruitcake is almost in a complete class by itself. Besides being used to describe a person's unsound mental state, it also serves as the only food to be a family heirloom. If you don't know that by now, you haven't been reading this blog.
And then we have duct tape. That which fixes all. Permanently, or temporarily, depending on the user. My father would have used it for his fillings if it stayed in his mouth. Saliva and scotch seemed to relax any adhesive properties it had in a dry state. It is usually waterproof, but it's the scotch that is likely a solvent.
Regardless. You only have to absorb the story of the rescue of the construction worker who was trapped 100 feet below Second Avenue in truly life-threatening, gripping mud, while working in the tunnel that would finally bring a subway to the length of Second Avenue. The effort by all involved in pulling this man up and out after many hours of being stuck was so great that a fare increase was nearly declared on the spot. But give it time, they always say.
Many people and many pieces of equipment were used to finally extricate Joseph Barone, who became trapped in the mud when he took a bad step off a top piece of plywood. Apparently, at that point of tunnelling for the subway, soil and mud is dug through, rather than blasting through bedrock, as is needed for other portions of the line.
Since a Second Avenue subway was first proposed in the 1930s, only to see the bond money disappear into another account, the construction of the subway has been a bit of a NYC joke. "Did you hear the one about the Second Avenue subway?" "No one else has either." My father told me of the plans for the line that were the topic of the day when he was kid: Prohibition was still in effect.
Poor and lucky Joseph Barone. Unlucky enough to need saving. Certainly lucky enough to be saved, while taking part in building a long running joke, all the while saved in part by a joked-about hardware store staple: duct tape.
Proof positive of its qualities is found in the news story by Marc Santora and Matt Flegenheimer, in yesterday's NYT.
"A Consolidated Edison truck, typically used to vacuum flooded areas, was rigged so its hose could stretch deep into the tunnel and suck out what it could. Additional sections were attached using duct tape."
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