In 1991, Fremont Scientists, after a careful, considered study at a local alehouse situated the Center of the Universe, with barely a slur of stumble, to be at the intersection of N Fremont Avenue and 35th Street N. Immediately they set off - now in disguise as members of the Fremont Business Association (FBA), to find a suitable monument to mark this momentous discovery. A live morning newscast reported the dismantling of a circa-1950- Cold War rocket fuselage from a building due for demolition. Once attached to A.J.'s surplus in Belltown, the Rocket had an iconic place in Seattle's streetscape and its removal signaled a loss of regional whimsy and a Federal relic. Word went out and within minutes, FBA bigwigs, now posing as Curiosity Collectors, negotiated the acquisition of the Rocket, and saved it from the scrap yard.
Without a plan, the Rocket languished in the back lots of Fremont until the summer of 1993. A team of ambitious business people, their identities forever to be shrouded in secrecy, then undertook to erect the Rocket on the "Acme Building' at the southeast corner of Evanston Ave N & N 36th St. Beset with a comedy of engineering problems, the well-intentioned team failed to raise the Rocket and slowly skulked off, bearing the shame and stigma of not being able to get it up.
In Spring of 1994, noted West Fremont rocket scientist (and local artist) Werner Von Hoge (a.k.sa. John Hoge) assembled a new team to rebuild the Rocket from top to bottom. They set their deadline as Summer Solstice, and the annual liberation of Fremont. This time specialists were called in (among them Rodman Miller, Quinton Lickliter, and Roger Wheeler) to engineer electronic features, outfit structural details, design new fins, paint details and murals, and according to legend, ransom the nose cone.
At 9 am on June 3, 1994, the Rocket made a perfect five-minute sub-orbital flight from the Fremont Rocket Works to touch down just off-center of the Center of the Universe. The Rocket bears the Fremont crest and motto, 'De Libertas Quirkas' (translated as "Freedom to be Peculiar"). Neon laser pods have been installed on each fin and on the nose.
For a short time, a coin-operated steam vapor machine allowed visitors to support the Rocket through paying for a burst of steam/smoke. Another vision of converting the 53' high monument into Fremont's own FM radio station, remains in suspense. Reports that installers tilted the Rocket ina trajectory that has it aimed directly at Seattle City Hall, as a deterrent against bad behavior, are often wildly misunderstood.
Fremont grate acknowledges all the Boosters, Scientists and Astronauts whose financial contributions made installation (and maintenance of the Rocket possible.
This strip was published during the George W. Bush era when he was mispronouncing the word nuclear as nucular. Zippy made fun of this mispronounciation and wonder why no one in the nucleus of GWB's inner circle ever corrected him. Zippy decided that no was muscular enough to tell the boss. The Rocket proclaimed that Zippy's word should be musclear!