Odd history or little known facts about your hometown.

I grew up in a white flight BR suburb. I don't know much about its history except that it was pretty rural when I was a kid.

They used to test H-bombs on my beautiful piece of property.

This old thing is still up and running today

Old Crow Medicine Show has an album named after my hometown, and they sing a song about a guy from there as well

The battle of New Orleans happened in Chalmette. Not sure what else I can claim about Chalmette.

The town I grew up in had an Annual Cabbage Chuck and Sauerkraut Wrestling Event, which is exactly like it sounds, and a Ruff Fish Tournament where you would get prizes for the biggest sheepshead (fresh water drum) or carp. Shockingly, the town has no major scholars

quote:

---

sheepshead (fresh water drum)

---

Freshwater drum is a gaspergou baw

It's actually pronounced Kenner Brah

It has the tallest structure in Louisiana, which is also one of the tallest on earth.

We used to go out to this Slidell cemetery at night on occasion back in the 90s. It used to be in the middle of the woods, but now it's surrounded by neighborhoods.

St Tammany Times Picayune
Oct 30, 1993
“Lingering Legends”
by Sara Shipley, St Tammany Bureau

Somewhere amid the twisted, moss covered oaks of Haaswood lies something deeper and darker than soft marsh grasses and swampy pools that catch the moon.
In the heart of the sleepy community northeast of Slidell, a legend creeps larger than life.
Ask anyone who has ventured down a gravel road at night to a secluded civil war cemetery, and they will tell you more than memories haunt these parts.
The legend of Onionhead is alive.
Onionhead, locals say, is a man whose tragic life has chained him to this cemetery.
The story varies – some say he cared for children who died at his own hands. Others say he witnessed the deaths in a fire. His name is said to come from a disease that distorted his head.
He is now the perpetual caretaker of this cemetery, legends says, and he waits to capture those who wander into it.
The cemetery, which has no clear owner since it was donated by the Edmundson family decades ago as a public burial site, has become a favorite haunt in recent years for teen-agers seeking the ghoul.
No one reports ever seeing him, but that doesn’t stop teens from looking around Haaswood and other secluded locations where he has been reported to lurk.

The tale has been popular for teens for at least 10 to 15 years, but Haaswood hasn’t always been Onionhead’s alleged stomping ground, Other places include the old Camp Salmen, Our Lady of Lourdes cemetery, and Greenwood cemetery.
Julius Hale, who has been maintaining the Haaswood cemetery since vandals broke into a tomb last year, said Onionhead has never been associated with Haaswood. “Last year and years back it would have been a good cemetery to get scared in because it was all shaggy, but now it’s kept up,“ he said.
Hale said he and another man plan to keep post at the locked cemetery on Halloween night to make sure no one disturbs it.

A spokeswoman for the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Office said deputies will patrol near cemeteries that night as well.
Junior Crowe of Pearl River, who has relatives buried in Haaswood, said he never heard of Onionhead, but that the cemetery has been the setting for many a ghost story.
“I think it’s an excuse for these young boys to take these girls out there,” he said.