back in February<\/a>.<\/p>\nOwners Penny and Tony Caciolo were happy to finally bring Chip back to normal, with Penny noting how awkward it was to only see his pants there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re excited because the community really rallied around him when he fell,\u201d Tony said, noting how some people even wanted a GoFundMe campaign for repairing him.<\/p>\n
Mark Cline of Virginia, who constructed Chip, returned to help put the statue back together. By around 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Cline said there were a few remaining touches, but that otherwise Chip was good to go.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The statue was installed in 2018 using a mold of a muffler man, a roadside statue meant to attract drivers to businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t take long for people to become attached to an iconic mascot \u2026 it\u2019s like the Statue of Liberty,\u201d Cline said. \u201cIt\u2019s an American icon. People love statues. They identify with these things. They\u2019re so huge. I think something about the size, the giants, something people are attracted to these just because \u2026 if it was life-sized and it looked exactly the same, he wouldn\u2019t make as much of an impression.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cline said he has dealt with damage to the roadside giants before \u2014 he once gave one a new head after it was damaged by a tornado in Missouri.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, it\u2019s my job I do every day,\u201d Cline said of restoring Chip. \u201cThere\u2019s a tremendous amount of satisfaction. But there\u2019s other giants waiting for me, and I almost feel like a doctor, like a triage doctor sometimes. I\u2019m very proud of my work, but once it\u2019s done, I sew it up and move on. There\u2019s always something in the wings for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside Scoop manager Natasha Obleschuk said the shop will celebrate Chip\u2019s full return both with a new chocolate-cherry flavor to debut this weekend. A welcome-back party will follow in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cChip fought the wind,\u201d a banner read. \u201cThe wind won.\u201d \u201cChip\u2019s last words: \u2018I\u2019ll be back.\u2019 \u201c \u201cPlease…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,60,5943,433,182,205,434,28,435,436,4237,289,432,2795],"class_list":["post-168057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-business","tag-coopersburg","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-lower-saucon-township","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-restaurants-food-and-drink","tag-retail","tag-saucon-valley","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories-tmc","tag-upper-saucon-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}