My Hometown Is Nuts, Second Edition

Gosling

I've been told this thread has been done before. Possibly by me. Hell with it, let's do it again.

The task for this thread: Take your hometown, come up with an amusing story about said hometown's history, and tell it to the masses. If you cannot think of one from your actual hometown, or have told all the good ones so many times that you're sick of telling them, do a neighboring town. I'm not picky.

Since I've already done the most amusing stories about Watertown a couple times on these boards, let's do neighboring town Ixonia.

Wikipedia wrote:

According to local tradition, the town received its name when the old Town of Union was split into two new towns in 1846. While the first new town was named Concord, residents were undecided about the name of the second. They threw slips of papers with letters of the alphabet into a hat and had a girl by the name of Mary Piper pick them until a word was made that could be used as the town name.

In other news, Ixonia is a word. Methinks they meant "something we could pronounce".

Feral

Reposted from [chat]:

Feral wrote: »

Guess whose hometown had a national politics scandal that was cut short by 9/11?

Guess whose hometown has the highest car theft rate in the nation?

Other notable trivia about my hometown: it's one of the most dangerous cities in California, it has some of the worst air quality in the nation, it's been ranked as one of the 10 unhealthiest cities in the US, it's home to some of the most toxic facilities in California, and it has a disproportionately large rate of clinical depression.

Greeper

The national guard killed college students in my home town.

deadonthestreet

Recently some dude raped a teacher here and then fled to Oregon. That's kind of a random place to flee to considering I live in Massachusetts.

Oboro

My town was the site of extensive copper mining, but everyone knew about that. We lost an entire street to a cave-in about a century after they closed up shop. Everyone knew about the copper mining.

The mercury well, though? My friends and I discovered the abandoned site first-hand. ... It wasn't all that interesting, actually.

...

Spawnbroker

My hometown is the television show Weeds, where every middle school and high school girl acts like Celia and all of the guys act like the main character's creepy brother-in-law.

nexuscrawler

The camp where they filmed Friday the 13th was down the street from my hometown.

We were also the proud owners of the first paved road in Jersey(its a fucking scary road too)

Jokerman

i just racked my brain for something when it was painfully obvious what i should post about.

wikipedia wrote:

In 1928, the American Cotillion Company decided to build a rayon plant in Rome as a joint-effort with the Italian Chatillon Corporation, and Italian premier Benito Mussolini sent a block of marble from the ancient Roman Forum inscribed with "From Old Rome to New Rome" to be used as the cornerstone of the new rayon plant. This factory opened in April 1929, and shortly thereafter Mussolini gave Rome a bronze replica of the original Romulus and Remus sculpture of the founders of ancient Rome. The statue was placed in front of City Hall on a base of white marble from Tate, Georgia, with a brass plaque inscribed:
"This statue of the Capitolene Wolf, as a forecast of prosperity and glory, has been sent from Ancient Rome to New Rome during the consulship of Benito Mussolini in the year 1929."
In 1940, anti-Italian sentiments due to World War II became so strong that the Rome city commission moved the statue into storage to prevent vandalism and replaced it with an American flag. In 1952, the statue was restored to its former location in front of City Hall.

It doesn't mention it in the article, but the babies had been stollen and had diapers put on them before. But how many cities have statues from violent dictators?

skyybahamut

My hometown has a private school where Marlon Brando went. Local legend has it that he buried the clapper of the tower bell so he could sleep in.

We also had a smaller brewery: (Now closed)

A Bleu Cheese Factory (they keep it in caves)

And is home of the worlds only Tilt-A-Whirl factory.

MuddBudd

The town I spent most of my childhood in (we moved a lot) was in Illinois. My grade school was one the first big national story explosion about a kid bringing a gun to school.

There was no actual violence, just some stupid kid brought it in to show it off or something. But suddenly school shootings seemed everywhere after that. That's how it seemed to me.

Oh, and oddly for a town in northern IL, they were in the midst of desegregating their school system, in the 90s. It wasn't going well cause the court appointed guy was never there.

Casual Eddy

Chapel Hill is the hole in the bible belt. It is a famously liberal town due to the large liberal arts college there (UNC) and it's proximity to research triangle park, which attracts a lot of high tech/medical folks from up north. CH has one of the highest PHD per capita rates in the country. In fact, it is so liberal, that Jessie Helms, old guard conservative and "pride" of north carolina (a senator) famously said 'you don't need a zoo in north carolina, just build a fence around Chapel Hill.' This is a point of pride for most north carolinians.

MKR

There was a KKK rally when some people wanted to boot the 10 commandments out of the Barrow County courthouse.

It was a bit of a thing.

ph blake

Yeah, this happened in my hometown.

Mr. Sumrow himself lived on the next street over from me; he was a pretty cool guy from what I remember.

Taximes

My city is home to a really nice music center which, despite being 30 miles and one hour away from Cleveland, is always greeted by musicians with "HELLO CLEEEEVELAND!"

Kilroy

Chapel Hill. Hopefully I'll be doing my grad work there.

My home town itself is boring as all get out, so I'll talk about the nearby city of Paducah instead. Paducah sits at the confluence of the Ohio and Tenessee rivers, making it an important part of the river trade system. For many years, it was also an essential hub of the railway, linking Chicago and St. Louis to Gulfport on the Gulf of Mexico.
In 1937, the Ohio river flooded, ravaging the city. Citizens were more likely to take boats down the street than any other form of transportation. After the flood waters receded, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was commissioned to build a floodwall that protects downtown Paducah. The wall is decorated with murals depicting the city's history.

Today, Paducah is most famous as the home of the American Quilt Society Museum and every spring quilters from all over the world flock to the city to compete and show their craft. For the past eight years, Paducah has also enacted an "Artist Relocation Program" which provides financial incentives for artists to set up shop in the city. And entire district of the city (Lower Town, the oldest district) has been converted into homes for these artists.

Improvolone

Not my home town, but I've spent some time here.
It is home to the catalyst for the Civil War.

The town was pretty destroyed.

Salvation122

Two years or so ago Memphis had over a hundred consecutive days where a homicide was committed.

Also a shitload of people once died there from yellow fever, and Elvis had a really tacky house.

I got nothin'.

Taximes

Salvation122 wrote: »

Two years or so ago Memphis had over a hundred consecutive days where a homicide was committed.

Also a shitload of people once died there from yellow fever, and Elvis had a really tacky house.

I got nothin'.

Isn't it also home to the first punch-in-the-face over the internet?

Salvation122

Taximes wrote: »

Salvation122 wrote: »

Two years or so ago Memphis had over a hundred consecutive days where a homicide was committed.

Also a shitload of people once died there from yellow fever, and Elvis had a really tacky house.

I got nothin'.

Isn't it also home to the first punch-in-the-face over the internet?

Heh. No, that was actually from Starkville, MS, where I am now, and where Johnny Cash once famously spent a night in city jail for stumbling down the street naked drunk off his ass.

We also have a giant field of pot being grown for research under federal grant. And before anyone asks, I try to avoid guard dogs and razorwire, so no.

Jokerman

And yet, no one has a statue from a bloodthirsty tyrant but me!

Local H Jay

"I asked myself, "Where would people never notice a town full of robots?" "

filmed in me home town

CycloneRanger

My hometown holds Earth's primary Stargate.

Actually it doesn't, but we do have the old NORAD facility. That's pretty cool, I guess, even though it's going to cease hosting daily operations soon.

chasm

I'm from Austin. A homeless transvestite ran for mayor.

Salvation122

CycloneRanger wrote: »

My hometown holds Earth's primary Stargate.

Actually it doesn't, but we do have the old NORAD facility. That's pretty cool, I guess, even though it's going to cease hosting daily operations soon.

Wow, Cheyenne is closing down? Seriously?

CycloneRanger

Salvation122 wrote: »

CycloneRanger wrote: »

My hometown holds Earth's primary Stargate.

Actually it doesn't, but we do have the old NORAD facility. That's pretty cool, I guess, even though it's going to cease hosting daily operations soon.

Wow, Cheyenne is closing down? Seriously?

Eh, they're keeping it in usable condition in case it's needed again, but from what I understand day-to-day operations are going to be moved to a nearby air force base; I can't remember which one. Wikipedia might know more.

Gosling

Oh, I've got one about Fort Atkinson. I used to be in that town a lot for college classes. I passed something called the National Dairy Shrine, and wondered about what it was but never enough to check it out.

I was wise.

Kagera

My town used to hate John Steinbeck when he was alive.

Now we hock him for tourism dollars.

Actually this also applies to other cities as well.

I LOVE hypocrisy!

Thomamelas

Several gentlemen attempted to move a house across a local lake in the middle of winter. Alas they misjudged the thickness of the ice, causing said house to fall in the lake.

Also it is claimed that Captain Kidd buried treasure in the town. Unfortunately every town along the New England coast claims the same thing.

Also the town has the highest number of boy scouts per scout age boy in the state of CT.

seasleepy

The city where I went to high school has a local eccentric millionaire named Stanley Marsh 3 (that's "three", not "the third"). Seriously.

A live broadcast from Amarillo by the Weather Channel was interrupted Friday morning when Stanley Marsh 3 performed an American Indian snow dance in front of the cameras.
...
Marsh, clad in an American Indian headdress, and three young people jumped out of a sport utility vehicle about 8 a.m. and began dancing around the camera, while the theme song from "Star Wars" blasted over the radio, [a guy from TWC] said. After repeatedly asking Marsh to leave, [the Weather Channel] was forced to cancel the broadcast, he said.

His house is named "Toad Hall."

He's also very big on public art installations. You may have heard of the Cadillac Ranch.

The most obvious one in town though is the hundreds of fake road signs. Some of these are actually styled like normal road signs (the first one I saw when we moved there was a yellow one that just had a pair of scissors on it), others have large amounts of text (often quotes) in various colors, others have paintings covering the whole thing. Remarkably, for a town whose general population thinks the concept of a public art installation is distinctly weird, there's actually a waiting list to be able to display one of these signs (or at least there was while I was still living there).

nexuscrawler

One of the iconic things about my home area was Wavin Willy.

He was a mentally retarded man who living in a little house by the local highway. For as long as anyone could remember he would sit at the end of his driveway in a lawn chair waving to virtually everyone who drove by. People would honk as the drove by, school buses would all wave back to him in unison.

When he died someone put a lawn chair where he sat and lots of people turned it into a makeshift memorial.

Captain Ultra

Let's see. Lincoln used to be called Lancaster, and back in the day, they were considering moving the capitol from Omaha to Lancaster, so a bunch of Omahans "moved" to Lancaster and forced the village to change its name to Lincoln, who had been recently assassinated. Apparently there were quite a few southern sympathizers in Nebraska. They hoped that by changing the name, enough shit would be kicked to stop the move. They calculated wrong and Lincoln not only is the capitol but is named after an awesome president. (Take that, Fremont, Nebraska, y'ain't neither of those things)

Also, in the 1980s, they filmed Terms of Endearment in Lincoln, and Debra Winger was in the movie. Our governor at the time started banging her.

evilbob

Adelaide is the capital of the only state in Australia that was not formerly a penal colony.

It's been referred to many times as either the murder capital the world or as having the largest number of murders/serial killers per capita in Australia/the world. None of those claims have any basis. They mostly come about because four of the most notorious crimes in Australia happened in and around here. They are The Truro Murders, The Snowtown Serial Murders, The Missing Beaumont Children and The Family Murders.

Gosling

seasleepy wrote: »

The most obvious one in town though is the hundreds of fake road signs.

I love your town now.

adejaan

The university in my hometown invented cookies and cream ice cream. Booyah!

Grislo

The name of my town can be traced back to the Iron Age. And we have a 100-years-old cinema. That's about as interesting as it gets without odd stories about haunted places.

The Cat

evilbob wrote: »

Adelaide is the capital of the only state in Australia that was not formerly a penal colony.

It's been referred to many times as either the murder capital the world or as having the largest number of murders/serial killers per capita in Australia/the world. None of those claims have any basis. They mostly come about because four of the most notorious crimes in Australia happened in and around here. They are The Truro Murders, The Snowtown Serial Murders, The Missing Beaumont Children and The Family Murders.

You also have a lot of churches!

My town was very definitely a penal colony. Oh boy was it a penal colony . Incidentally, the dimbulb brits who founded it managed to plunk it in an area that was considered neutral meeting territory by the local aboriginal tribes, who were also a bit dim in assuming therefore that whitey was just visiting and would take off back to the land of ghosts any day now... *tapping foot, impatient look*. Yeah, things went downhill from there

Its kind of picked up in the last decade, and is now basically a giant building site with some people in it, complaining about the lack of adequate infrastructure. Internal migration booms are a bitch.

LondonBridge

My hometown had a Ebola scare.

A filovirus suspect as either another subtype of the Ebola or a new filovirus of Asian origin, was discovered among crab-eating macaques within the Covance Primate Quarantine Unit in 1989. This attacted significant media attention including the publication of The Hot Zone. The filovirus was named after the community. The monkeys suspected of the virus were euthanized and the facility was sterilized.[14] Eventually the facility was torn down and replaced with office space. It became a Kindercare and is a Mulberry Child Care and preschool center as of 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston,_Virginia#Ebola_scare

JustinSane07

My town spent a million dollars on the practice field for the high school football team...

...Man my town is boring. I got fucking nothing else...

Wait!

That might be it! I live in The Most Boring Town in America! Yes! That's it!

Mojo_Jojo

The place I went to school had the first race riots in the UK for bloody ages. I didn't see any of though, and we kept going to school despite being at the epicentre. My friends who lived locally would come to school with exciting stories of mounted police fighting people in the streets.

The Oldham Riots were a short but intense period of violent rioting which occurred in Oldham, a town in Greater Manchester, England, in May 2001. They were the worst racially-motivated riots in the United Kingdom for fifteen years prior, briefly eclipsing the sectarian violence seen in Northern Ireland.[1] The Oldham Riots were the first of a series of major riots during summer 2001, which saw similar racially-motivated confrontation follow in Bradford, Leeds and Burnley.

The riots followed a long period of inter-racial tensions and attacks in Oldham, occurring particularly between groups from the local and wider White and South Asian-Muslim communities. The most violent rioting occurred in the Glodwick area of the town which is a multi-ethnic district of Oldham and home to a large community of people of Pakistani heritage.[2] Here, up to five hundred Asian youths were involved, and one hundred police officers reported to the scene in full riot gear and patrolled with dogs as helicopters circled overhead.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldham_race_riots

MKR

adejaan wrote: »

The university in my hometown invented cookies and cream ice cream. Booyah!

I'm pretty sure ice cream and cookies have been around for thousands of years.

clownfood

Where I am from is pretty dull outside of the 3 resident military bases. We do have this though:



oh yeah..in 1607 a bunch of Brits landed on the shores before moving inland to found the Jamestown settlement.

Thankfully we don't boast being the city where Michael Vick is from.