July 18, 2008
Fremont, You've Got Competition
Seattlest is on the road, delivering an automobile to The Other Washington. The previous night, we stayed in a charming little motel in Wallace, Idaho. We've been to Wallace before, very briefly, and made a note to return someday. The town is an architectural and historical gem; it is also the "Silver Capital of the World". That's the beauty of this great nation of ours: it's got more self-proclaimed capitals of this, that, and the other than any other country, we're guessing. We live in such abundance!
Previous to stumbling into Fremont, our residency and explorations of east central Illinois made us believe that Philo, Illinois was the Center of the Universe. When we came to Seattle, of course, we began to grapple with the theological and physical ramifications of possible binary centers of the universe. Did the two orbit about each other... forming an "average perceived center of the universe" somewhere in the Badlands?
Now this—in Idaho of all places, the least theoretically rigorous and most philosophically tenuous of all of our United States:
On September 25, 2004, Mayor Ron Garitone proclaimed Wallace to be the center of the Universe. Specifically, a sewer access cover was declared to be the precise location of the center of the Universe. A specially made manhole cover was made to mark the spot. It bears the words "Center of the Universe. Wallace, Idaho. [wikipedia]We don't quite know what to make of this. We've never believed Fremont to possess any universal centrality. If it once did, it must have drifted off-center when Fremont News closed. If anybody could claim Fremont's right recently, it would have been Fremont News, what with their wall clock showing the de-facto official "turn your watch back five minutes" Fremont Standard Time.
But we're not ready to embrace Wallace's claim just yet. There's a list of Centers of the Universe, most with equally hokey justifications.
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Fuck all y'all, everyone knows the Hub of the Universe is in Boston (there's a plaque). Oliver Wendell Holmes said so himself, and he was, like, old and smart and stuff.
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Enh... *yawn* Boston and its tedious sense of self-importance brought on by its overblown Brahmin entitlement... *zzzz* Its history and architecture are impressive, sure sure, but they are unfortunately slathered with caked-on layers of Puritan Residue, which dampen attempts to make it a super cool place to live.
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I used to live a stone's throw from Philo, actually... but wound up moving to Fremont. I'd argue that Fremont is a little closer to the center of the universe, but who knows? Maybe it's me instead ;)