I've done that before, only it was blowing a hole in a rusted rear brake line instead. Probably the sort of thing you should check every now and then when you drive a 40-year-old car... Limped it one town over to my parents' place, since they had an actual garage which still contained most of my tools, using a combination of the parking brake (the old-school floor mounted kind you have to pull a release on) and when that failed, driving off the road.
And when the fuck are people going to learn that if you have an automatic, you can brake with goddamn torque converter? Just downshift, fool!