Nancy Smeltzer of Columbus was road-weary on her drive home from Utica, NY when she saw something big and shiny out of the corner of her eye. What it was made her grab her cellphone and shoot a picture, and, moments later, she posted this on Facebook: "Car? Rocket? Hallucination?"

Her Cleveland friends responded immediately. "It's the Euclid Beach rocket car!" They blew up her Facebook page with remembrances and sightings of their own. Having grown up in Missouri, Smeltzer was unfamiliar. "I thought maybe we had taken a wrong turn at Cape Canaveral," she said.

Clevelanders know that the sleek rockets once flew through the air, gliding in a large arc around the tower at Euclid Beach Park on the Lake Erie shore. Built in 1938 by the park's welder, the stainless steel rocket ships celebrated the Flash Gordon era and offered bird's eye views of the park, the waves, and fishermen on the pier.

The amusement park was demolished in 1969, its assets sold at auction. Pieces of some of Cleveland's best summer memories were dismantled and scattered across the country.

One day in 1978, businessman mechanic Ron Heitman was driving down Saranac Road in East Cleveland.

"I spotted it out of the corner of my eye in a guy's back yard, and I knew just what it was," he said. "I was preparing an Olds Toronado for a race, and I kept thinking about this rocket and wondering if the Toronado motor would fit in it."

Curiosity got the better of him and he returned to the languishing rocket. Its owner had bought the rocket at the auction for his children to play in.

"The kids had grown and her he is, stuck with Shamu in his backyard," Heitman said. "He was happy I came along to take it off his hands, and three-and-a-half months later, we had a car."

The Toronado motor did fit inside, along with a 30-gallon fuel tank. Heitman built the steering mechanism with chains and gears from earth moving equipment. He cut up the Olds frame and attached it to the rocket, along with a two-by-four piece of steel connected to two I-beams. "The frame is girders, it's quite a piece of machinery; really well-built," he said of the 6,270 pound behemoth. He liked the result so well that he found the second of the three Euclid Beach rockets, bought it and in two short months, "because then I knew what I was doing," he had another road rocket.

Clevelanders have seen the rockets on city streets for years. They add excitement to local parades and block parties, transport brides to the church and take high school seniors to prom. The cars have been in 10 consecutive Macy's Thanksgiving Day parades. "It's probably the neatest parade you could ever be in," Heitman said. "I drove the New Kids on the Block when they were still new."

The vehicles are street legal, and have reached a confirmed speed of 136 mph. The first rocket did 98 mph in 17.58 seconds in a standing quarter mile. Yes, Heitman, his wife and his daughter all race autos.

Goodyear invited Heitman to bring his rocket car to the Indy 500. He drove around the speedway, carrying race car drivers in his stainless steel juggernaut. Legendary driver and race car owner Parnelli Jones was one of the passengers and started shouting, "Hey driver, you're crazy." Heitman considers that a badge of honor. "Makes me certifiable," he said.

Heitman tells of the time he was driving the rocket car on a toll road to a big event in Springfield, IL. He got pulled over by a state highway patrolman. Heitman assured him the vehicle is safe and street legal, but the officer demanded that Heitman follow him. They ended up at the Highway Patrol station, where 12 officers piled into the rocket for a group photo, which landed on the cover of the Highway Patrol Gazette with the headline, "New Highway Patrol vehicle for Illinois."

At an event at the Kemper House in Olmsted Falls recently, jaws dropped as the crowd spotted the gleam of stainless steel. Residents of the Alzheimer's residential facility flashed back to bygone days when Heitman pulled up in his customized rocket. Wrinkled faces broke into grins wide enough to erase life's wear and tear, if only for the time it took to circle the neighborhood.

Pam Hozan, who helped plan the event, helped the seniors get safely into the silver time machine. Hozan, dressed in a clown suit, hopped in for one of the last rides of the afternoon.

"That was the most fun I've had in a long time," she said afterward, laughing as she adjusted the blue clown wig that had blown back during the ride. "That's a memory that the residents will have, well, hopefully for a little while, anyway," she said.

Heitman gets 20 or 30 calls a day, asking about the rockets and how to book one for an event. The charge is $185 an hour. Heitman pulls up in the rocket like the Wizard of Oz, and turns black-and-white memories into vivid color, 3-D reality.

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