Who would've thought there would be so much rust on a buried one-ton Plymouth from the fifties

It's kinda slow at work this week, so I thought I'd take a stab at some of that week and a half of vacation time I've gotta burn through by July 2nd. I'll be taking my first vacation day since December (and that was to deal with my car being totalled) on Friday.

Good timing, too, since I live a couple blocks away from where they'll be pulling a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere out of the ground on Friday. At first, I thought it'd be cool to see how well this car has held up after 50 years in a concrete bunker buried next to city hall. However, with reports today that they opened the concrete vault to find a couple feet of rust-colored water in with the car...I might be going to watch a bunch of car nuts get their hearts broken when the undercarriage falls out of the car when they hoist it out of the hole.

Let's face it, this'll be much more gratifying to a smartass like me.

As much as I would've liked to have seen this puppy come out of the ground in pristine condition, you know, as a symbol of our state's prosperity and endurance... It's looking like it's gonna be yet another example of our poor planning in this city when it comes to anything to do with roads, whether it be what's on them, or in them.

This concrete crypt the Belvedere has been sitting in for half a century was, as its exact location was discovered earlier this year, halfway under a sidewalk on Denver Avenue. Quite possibly the only semi-decent, barely craked sidewalk left in the whole of downtown Tulsa. Workers had to obliterate the sidewalk to get to the crypt.

In 1957, this crypt was believed to be able to withstand a nuclear blast. This coming from people who also collectively believed that hiding under a school desk could achieve the same result. One thing they failed to take into account was the determination of water in this city to go where it really isn't wanted and stick around there for a long time. Any Tulsan with a basement can agree with me on this.

I just tend to look at this project like any other best laid plan in this town: Why we're not considered the Duct Tape use capitol of the world is beyond me. The asphalt in our roads are made of kitty litter and wallpaper paste. Our bridges look like they are held together merely by the collective will of our citizens. Our water and gas lines, if the amount of work they've been doing in my neighborhood is any indication, were installed by M.C. Escher. Our buildings downtown all look like they were from only three different time periods: The 1920's. the 1980's and last year.

But in a way, that's what I love about this city. Somehow, we're making it all work. Tulsa may be one huge unfinished symphony, but it's a testament to the hard work we're willing to put into it to make it the city it is today. If the city had been put together truly half-assed, Tulsa would be a ghost town. The crypt this car has been sitting in may not have held out all of the water, but if we had done that half-assed, it would've collapsed into a sinkhole decades ago.

Instead, our founders built the city about three-quarter-assed. In a sense, the Belvedere is the perfect metaphor for Tulsa. Sure, it ain't gonna be pretty, but with enough hard work it could run. Just like everything else around here.

I propose a new slogan to come out of this: Tulsa - We'll get 'er running somehow.

One final note: Look on the bright side. If we decide to bury a new car, we won't even have to wrap it in plastic or build a concrete vault for it. Name one modern car that has enough metal in it to rust out over the next fifty years.