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2003-09-19 - 6:46 a.m.

Tape It

During slow times, or when I’m bored or frustrated, or in late spring when I’m squirming to be free of work, I sit and stare out my office windows.

The north side of my office is a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, and I have a nice view of an uninhabited, heavily wooded lot across the street from campus. Some days I have a bird’s eye view of the maintenance men tackling their chores. Yesterday I spent a part of my morning watching one of the guys build a fence. Someone in the upper echelon decided it was necessary to erect the fence to keep the kids out of a large flower bed planted last spring. Last year the white, vinyl-coated posts had been set, yesterday Jerry was stretching the top and bottom cables that would serve as railings.

At first I was amused by the project because I knew two strands of vinyl wire were not going to serve as a deterrent to kids. It wasn’t long before I was amused more by the work in progress. Jerry, his bib overalls hugging his belly, leaned against his truck, crossed his arms and studied the fence posts. Then he disappeared. When he returned he had a handful of tools and was dragging two lengths of vinyl wire. For the next hour he alternately threaded the wire through the posts and leaned against his truck, fingering his chin whiskers, contemplating the fence.

Sometime later I noticed a student sprawled on the grass—inside the fenced area--watching as Jerry again studied some problem with the construction. And later still I watched as both Jerry and the student crawled on hands and knees through the grassy area surrounding the flower bed, then gingerly parted the flowers and raked their fingers through the mulch bed. That was too much; I had to ask what the hell they were doing.

“The wire clampin thing flew off and we lost er in the grass,” Jerry said. Then he told me how he had to loop the wire through a large eye-bolt, crimp it together with a small clamp and secure the bolt through the fence post. And he had a dilemma, he didn’t have any more clampin things.

Then he disappeared again. Eventually, he returned with what he needed to finish assembling the kid-resistant fence. I hung around, leaning against his truck, and watched as he, with the help of the student, tugged the wire—which he had earlier hacksawed a smidgen too short--through the eye-bolt, formed a loop, secured it with several layers of duct tape and declared the fence complete.

I’m not totally ignorant of the benefits of duct tape; last February I listened to the government tell me to stock up in case of terrorist attack. I read Sunday’s news account of how, on a flight from Hawaii, airplane passengers and an air marshal had subdued and then duct-taped a man walking the aisle reading his Bible; and I’m familiar with lawsuits against educators for putting duct tape over the mouths of talkative kids. I can remember my Bohemian neighbor in Cedar Rapids duct taping her shoes instead of purchasing a new pair, and I’ve seen the cartoon advising people not to duct tape their mouths and noses as a way of protecting against SARS.

However, until watching our fence be constructed with duct tape, I hadn’t given much thought to its universal use as a miracle cure and fix-it for all things broken. If it’s broken and can’t be fixed with duct tape, bailing wire or J-B Weld, the damn thing can’t be fixed!

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