1. Chelsea is the gateway to the Waterloo Recreation Area, hundreds of acres of swamp and forest where you can watch red-winged blackbirds and poach white-tailed deer to your heart's content.

2. Hometown of actor Jeff Daniels (Dumb N Dumber, My Favorite Martian, Purple Rose of Cairo, Something Wild, Terms of Endearment, Arachnaphobia!).

3. My Physics teacher at Chelsea High School brought in his bass guitar and played R.E.M. to demonstrate sound waves.

4. Same teacher later shot four school administrators, killing the superintendent, after being accused of making mix tapes of love songs for some female students.

5. During the last years of the 1980s at Chelsea High School, there were so many suicide attempts, suicide successes and victims of car-wrecks that the school brought in a grief counselor. Not for us to consult on an on-going basis, mind you, but for a one-time-only lecture held in the gymnasium. It was a sort of pep rally of grief.

6. Homoerotic¹ hazing. For the swim team and other sports teams, the upperclassmen took great pleasure in giving "pink-bellies" and "peanut butter wedgies" to the incoming freshmen. A "pink-belly" consists of baring the victim's abdomen and slapping it until red. A "peanut butter wedgie" consists of dumping peanut butter down the back of the victim's underpants, then pulling the back waistband of the underpants violently upward, preferably up to the middle of the victim's back, or over his head, or until something ripped.

7. Paddles were used for corporal punishment in the Junior High school as recently as 1985, and probably since.

8. Home of Jiffy Mix, international producer of cake and biscuit mixes for over 69 years. In a town of less than 5000 residents, details like this seem important to distinguish your town (see Jeff Daniels above).